


there's no coming home

by luxluminaire



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-09-22 13:09:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9608873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxluminaire/pseuds/luxluminaire
Summary: After Wolf 359's strange change in behavior and the brief alien contact, Lovelace finds herself trapped in a hopeless situation: the Hephaestus has undergone severe damage, her shuttle has become lost in space with Eiffel on board, and the rest of the crew now has even more reason to distrust her. But even in the face of insurmountable obstacles and the prospect of never seeing home again, she manages to find strength and comfort from an unexpected source, and so maybe there is a glimmer of hope for her amidst the landscape of a dying space station.(Lovelace, Minkowski, and the unlikely relationship that develops between them in the face of inevitable death)





	1. Chapter 1

When Lovelace wakes up strapped to the observation table in the Hephaestus’s lab, she is convinced she is trapped in some kind of horrible nightmare. Maybe once, just once, she’ll have a dream that _isn’t_ about the godforsaken space station that is determined to keep pulling her back to it. Today, however, is not that day. Not only is she still onboard the Hephaestus, but it is becoming increasingly clear to her that this is not a dream. No, this is her waking up to reality, one that is hazy and twinged with pain but nonetheless _real_.

“Captain Lovelace. Can you hear me?”

That voice. Of _course_ it’s that voice. Lovelace focuses her vision to see the face of Selberg ( _Hilbert_ , she mentally corrects herself--Selberg was then, Hilbert is now) looming over her. She blinks at the light that he shines in her eyes to check her responsiveness, and when she opens her eyes again he does not go away.

“Not you,” she murmurs, her voice heavy with the aftereffects of being under sedation.

“I will take that as ‘yes.’” Hilbert switches off the light. “You were severely injured. Shrapnel from exploding wall panel in your abdomen. I was able to repair major damage, but you have a long recovery ahead of you.”

“Great,” Lovelace manages to rasp out in sarcastic reply. A flash of memory surfaces in her sluggish mind: the explosion of the panel in question and her shoving Minkowski out of the trajectory of its path. Not one of her brighter ideas in hindsight, but what good captain doesn’t put her life on the line in a time of crisis?

With an enormous amount of effort, she shifts her left arm. Upon catching a glimpse of her upper arm, she notices that the dead man’s switch is no longer strapped to it. “What--where--” she begins, but Hilbert hushes her into silence.

“You must save your strength,” he says.

Lovelace does not have the energy to resist him. Trying to ignore the persistent ache of pain in her body, she lies still as Hilbert continues to examine her. Her consciousness remains fuzzier than she’d like it to be, and so she is only dimly aware of the sound of the door opening a few minutes later. Minkowski’s voice follows, but the words she exchanges with Hilbert are too quiet for her to overhear.

She dozes off not long after, and when she wakes again she has no idea if minutes or hours have passed. What she _does_ know is that Hilbert is nowhere to be seen, which immediately sets her more at ease. Instead, Minkowski is the one at her bedside, and relief crosses the commander’s face when she sees that Lovelace is awake.

“Hey,” says Minkowski. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.” Not that Lovelace can really be _fine_ when she feels like she has been hit by a truck, but she’s certainly not going to tell Minkowski otherwise. She tries to sit up as best as she can against her restraints, giving a groan of pain at the exertion.

“Easy, easy.” Minkowski gently pushes her back down to lie on the examination table. “I was able to convince Hilbert to give us some time to talk privately, but his conditions were that I make sure you don’t overexert yourself and contact him the minute anything goes wrong. And I’d really rather not have to call him back in here.”

“Where is he?” Lovelace asks. Even if that maniac of a man has saved her life, she does not like the idea of him having free reign of the Hephaestus. No crisis is big enough to make her forget everything else he has done to her.

“I’ve locked him back up in the observation deck for now, but he says he’ll need to keep close watch over you as long as you’re still on bedrest.” Minkowski’s forehead crinkles with frown lines, as if she does not entirely approve of this course of action. “I suppose that no matter what’s happened, we can’t deny that he saved your life. Although in his words, you’re ‘really good at not dying.’” She does a decent imitation of Hilbert’s accent with her last words.

Lovelace’s bitter laughter dies away when her abdominal muscles scream in protest at the action. “That’s me,” she says. “Too goddamn persistent for my own good.” And then, remembering the lack of the familiar weight of the dead man’s switch against her arm, she adds, “The sensor. Did it…?”

She cannot bring herself to finish the question. Minkowski’s expression darkens, and Lovelace already knows that whatever is about to leave her mouth will be nothing good.

“You… flatlined, while Hilbert was operating on you,” Minkowski explains. “He was able to resuscitate you quickly, but it… It was still enough. The bomb went off.”

She maintains a forced tone of evenness in her response, but the look on her face tells Lovelace that there is more to the story. There _has_ to be, if the bomb has detonated without causing major damage to the Hephaestus. She thinks back to what the plan had been before she’d taken a piece of shrapnel to the gut. The shuttle. Right. They were planning on using her shuttle to get the station back in a safe orbit after the star put on its surprise blue lightshow.

“And the shuttle?” she asks.

“We were able to use its engine power to help us get back in orbit, but the shuttle ended up getting detached from the station. We were trying to reattach it when the bomb went off.” Minkowski pauses here. She closes her eyes and scrubs a hand against her forehead. “Eiffel was on the shuttle when it happened. We were able to receive confirmation that he’d survived, but the force of the explosion sent the shuttle hurtling into deep space. We lost all communication with him.”

“Oh.” The gravity of the situation hits Lovelace all at once. A member of the crew lost, their one chance to leave the Hephaestus gone--no wonder Minkowski looks so grim. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Minkowski exhales a wavering breath. “I thought it would be better if you heard about it from me rather than Hilbert.”

Hilbert. Lovelace’s first instinct is to immediately blame him for the latest development in the unending nightmare of life on the Hephaestus, but for once, this might be something out of his hands. As long as he knew that Eiffel was on that shuttle, he would have never done anything to endanger his precious test subject. No, the blame lies elsewhere this time, and Minkowski is doing a hell of a good job of not immediately jumping to the conclusion that this is Lovelace’s fault. Her shuttle, her bomb--it’s not a stretch at all for the rest of the crew to come at her with pointed fingers. They have already been clear enough in their distrust of her from the moment she returned to the station.

“How’s the station holding?” she asks, deciding to press forward with business matters.

“It’s…” Minkowski hesitates, as if she is unsure of how to reply. “It’s functioning for now. I’m waiting for Hera to report back with a full assessment of the damage. How’s that coming, by the way, Hera?”

“Um, not that great,” comes the sound of Hera’s response. “A lot of the systems still aren’t responding, and I’ve only been able to get a few back online to run the fixes I need.”

“And how many systems are currently down?” asks Minkowski.

“One hundred and six by my last count, sir.”

“Well, that’s just great,” says Lovelace. She does not bother to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “The star went berserk, I almost died, the shuttle is gone, Eiffel is lost in space, and on top of that half the station isn’t even running properly right now. I don’t see how things can go even _more_ wrong at this point.”

“You think I don’t know that?” The hard edge of irritation makes its way into Minkowski’s tone. “I’m doing the best I can. But if things don’t start improving soon, I’m going to have to contact Command and request their support.”

Lovelace gives a mirthless scoff of laughter. “Command? Do you seriously think Command is going to help us? That they even _care_ about us? As long as the station is even remotely operational, they’re not going to do anything. I’ve done this song and dance before, Minkowski. And it ends with us either getting ourselves the hell off this station without Command’s help or staying up here until we die. Those are our only options.”

“I know. I _know_.” Minkowski’s words break off into a sigh of frustration. She rubs a hand across her forehead again. “I’m sorry. I’ll… I’ll think of something. There’s just a lot for me to deal with right now.”

“Then I suggest you deal with it,” Lovelace says. “You’re the one in command of this station. It’s time for you to put your big girl pants on and not waste valuable time sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Got it?”

She does not care that her words veer into the territory of harshness. During her own forays into hopeless situations (and Lovelace has become a master of hopeless situations by now), she’d certainly wished that someone besides the voices in her own head could have talked some sense into her. Everything that she has witnessed from Minkowski thus far has proven that she is an extremely capable woman, and Lovelace will be damned if she has to watch her give up in the face of potential disaster.

At first, Minkowski does not respond, and the only sound between them is the background noise of the medical equipment in the laboratory. She then takes the deep inhale and exhale of a calming breath. “You’re right, Captain,” she replies. “I’ll see what I can do to assist Hera with any preliminary repairs. You should rest up in the meantime.”

As if Lovelace can rest when she is under Hilbert’s care and observation. A quiet whisper in the back of her mind immediately jumps to the worst-case scenario-- _what if he has done something to you, what if you’re going to become the latest iteration of his sick experiments_ \--but she quickly dismisses those thoughts. Hilbert is not foolish enough to try anything to incapacitate her, not unless he wants another death wish on his head. Not after she has made it perfectly clear to him that she is _not_ afraid to employ violence against him.

She takes a bracing breath when Hilbert enters the lab again and continues his examination of her. One thing is for certain: it’s going to be a long few weeks of recovery for her.

 

* * *

 

This is not the first time that Lovelace has been laid up in bed with a serious injury, but she has forgotten how mind-numbingly _boring_ bedrest is. When her only interactions are with the doctor whose guts she hates, the commander who only visits to give her status updates, and the autopilot who remains a model of passive-aggression throughout the majority of their communications, Lovelace grows stir-crazy after the very first day. Minkowski brings the TV into the lab to give her at least one method of entertainment, but the Hephaestus’s film library is equally as disappointing now as it was during her first stay on the station. There’s only so many times she can endure _Home Alone 2_ before she loses all tolerance for Christmas spirit and cleverly-placed booby traps.

When Hilbert finally lets her leave the lab, and then later clears her for light exercise along with the physical therapy he has instructed her to do to combat the effects of muscular atrophy, it’s like a holiday in and of itself. With the thought of how far she can stretch the words “light exercise,” she heads for the treadmill on the middeck and straps herself in for a run. It’s the same machine that had been on the station three years ago, and she’d become very well-acquainted with it during that time. There’s nothing like running for miles to help her forget how screwed everyone is if conditions on the station do not improve soon--although the concept of running for miles and going nowhere is not lost on her on a metaphorical level.

She sets her pace at a light jog, forcing herself to show at least some degree of restraint lest she end up stuck under Hilbert’s care again. He has already preemptively denied her access to his stash of painkillers except in the case of extreme emergencies, clearly having learned his lesson from the last time she’d been injured on this station. It’s probably for the best, Lovelace decides. Minkowski will not take kindly to the idea of her using the occasional painkiller high to help her through difficult times.

And speaking of Minkowski, the sound of an opening door heralds her arrival about halfway through Lovelace’s run. “Commander,” Lovelace says to her in terse greeting. “What do you want?”  
A slight frown crosses Minkowski’s expression. “Are you sure you should be exerting yourself like this?” she asks. “Hilbert said--”

“I don’t care what he said,” replies Lovelace. “I know my limits. I’m not going to sit around and do nothing whenever you don’t need me for repairs.”

“All right,” Minkowski says, although the tone of her voice remains doubtful. “Have you messed with the settings too much? Because I have it set specifically to what I’ve been using for my own workouts and--” She breaks off with a sigh. “I suppose that’s not important right now, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” Lovelace slows her pace so that she does not tire herself before their conversation is over. “What do you want?” she asks again.

In the weeks that have passed since she has learned that the shuttle has been lost in space, Lovelace has been anticipating the moment that Minkowski lays the blame for that incident directly at her feet. She understands if Minkowski has wanted to hold off on the accusations until Lovelace is on the other side of her recovery, but by now she has no reason to remain silent on the matter if she truly blames Lovelace. Perhaps Minkowski is more charitable in her judgment than Lovelace expects, and yet that does not stop her from wondering “Is this going to be the conversation?” every time they speak with each other.

“I need to talk to you about Hilbert,” says Minkowski.

“What about him?” Lovelace replies, trying to keep her response as nonchalant as she can when the matter of Hilbert is involved.

“There are still a lot of repairs that need to be done on the station. You’re not well enough to be on a full rotation schedule yet, and even with Hera’s help one, sometimes two, pairs of hands won’t be enough. So…”

Minkowski leaves the unfinished thought hanging in the air, but Lovelace does not need her to say anything more to understand her meaning. “No,” she says in immediate response. “I’ve already cooperated with him enough to last me a lifetime. I don’t care if he saved mine and Eiffel’s lives. That doesn’t excuse everything else he’s done. And I really don’t think we can afford the time to have one of us pointing a gun at his head 24/7 while he’s working.”

Minkowski huffs out a frustrated breath. “This isn’t up for debate. We need another person working on the station or else we’re going to fall even further behind in repairs than we already are. And like it or not, Hilbert is the only option we have.”

“So why even bother coming to me?” Lovelace asks. Her feet pound against the treadmill with heavy footfalls as she makes a valiant attempt to not unload _all_ of her negative feelings onto Minkowski. “Clearly this is a decision you felt fully confident in making yourself. Why say you need to talk to me about Hilbert and then completely disregard my opinion?”

“Because.” Minkowski stands unwavering in front of her, her arms folded in front of her chest. “I think you deserve the respect of knowing my plans before I carry them out so that you’re not left blindsided. And I will make sure that he’s working under my supervision at all times. I’ll have you paired with either myself or Hera whenever I need you for a two-person job. With any luck you won’t even have to interact with him at all.”

At least Minkowski is smart enough to have the two crew members who hold the most contempt for Hilbert working as far away from him as possible. Having to cooperate with Hera, however, has already established itself to be a trying task for Lovelace in the time that has passed since she has been permitted to work short repair shifts. Like Minkowski, Hera has not outright stated any direct accusations about Lovelace’s involvement in Eiffel getting lost in space, but her attitude speaks louder than words. Hera wields passive-aggression as if it is a weapon, and for an AI programmed to have a polite and friendly disposition she has certainly been giving Lovelace an abundance of carefully worded sass lately. (“I don’t know, Captain, _can_ I?” she’d said when Lovelace had requested her to raise the temperature on the bridge yesterday, the tone of her response as cold as the chill in the air.)

“Well, isn’t _that_ generous of you, Commander,” Lovelace says. Now is not the time to be petty, though. With the Hephaestus still far away from its dubiously operational conditions prior to the star’s change in behavior, the major choice seems to be between “being petty” and “surviving.” No matter how bad the situation gets, survival has always been Lovelace’s top priority. Not even the issue of Hilbert is enough to make her budge from that stance.

“Fine, we’ll do it your way.” she relents. “But if this blows up in our faces, I’ll be the first one to say ‘I told you so.’”

The tight-lipped expression on Minkowski’s face does not give way to the irritation or perhaps even bitter humor that Lovelace has expected to elicit from her. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

A brief silence falls between them, broken only by the quiet sound of Lovelace’s footfalls on the treadmill. “Well,” Minkowski continues on, “I have to get back to work and give Hilbert his new assignment. Thank you for understanding, Captain.”

“Understanding” is the last word the Lovelace would use to describe her acquiescence to Minkowski’s words. She will _never_ understand why Minkowski is perfectly content to let a murderer wander free around the Hephaestus, and so the most she can offer is grudging agreement. Despite the boiling undercurrent of tension between her and the other members of the crew, cooperation is the only thing that will keep all of them from dying out here on a malfunctioning station.

“Minkowski,” Lovelace says to her as she turns to leave.

She stops in mid-motion and turns back to face Lovelace. “Hmm?”

“When was the last time you slept?”

Lovelace is the last person who should be concerned about another person’s sleeping habits, considering her own sleep schedule has been shot to hell for a long time thanks to the winning combination of nightmares and insomnia. But she knows how easy it is to slip into the pattern of pulling all-nighters in the name of fixing _just one more thing_ , and she refuses to let Minkowski create a trend of Hephaestus commanders who stop knowing the definition of a good night’s sleep. At least until they can find a way to fix the major systems and leave the station, there is too much at stake.

“I’m fine,” Minkowski replies. “If you think that sleep deprivation is clouding my judgment, you’re wrong. Maybe I haven’t been sleeping as much as I should lately, but I’m _fine_. I understand your concern, but you don’t need to worry about me.”

“I’m not worried at all, Commander,” Lovelace says to Minkowski’s retreating back as she departs.

She picks up the pace of her jog, pushing herself as far as her still-healing body will let her. Running for miles and yet going nowhere--yes, there has been no better metaphor for her life than there is in this moment. Unlike her last stay on the Hephaestus, this time there is no shuttle for her to build, no daring escape plan that will finally free her from this godforsaken place. She is trapped here with Minkowski, with Hera, with _Hilbert_ , and the only way forward for her is to survive.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue in the first part of this chapter is adapted directly from "Pan-Pan."

As the days, weeks, and months pass, the conditions on the Hephaestus do not improve despite every effort that the crew puts in. Every time they solve one problem, three more pop up in its place, and if Lovelace weren’t already well-acquainted with working in a state of low morale, she would have given up long ago. It doesn’t help that she is often relegated to playing tech support while everyone else takes care of the bigger repairs, which only deepens her frustration at the current situation. With the silently looming cloud of tension between the members of the crew, sometimes she wants to do nothing more but scream at them to _get over it already_ and stop tiptoeing around the multiple elephants in the room.

The breaking point finally comes one hundred and sixteen days after everything has gone to hell. Yet another station malfunction has led to the crew having to huddle together in the freezing temperatures of the aft deck waiting for Hera’s reset of the thermal system to kick in, and between the sub-zero temperatures, the recently-blown hole in the station, and the natural need to assign blame for the day’s events, Lovelace _knows_ one of their number is bound to snap soon. In the back of her mind she has always assumed that Hera would be the one to do so first, letting the stress of the repairs manifest into blaming Lovelace for the loss of her best friend. Instead, it is _Hilbert_ of all people who casts the first stone at her as all of the tension of the past three months boils over into a full-out verbal brawl.

“I have never asked for forgiveness. _Never_ ,” he snarls when the accusations hurl toward him about the actions that he has taken against the past and present crews. “But perhaps _you_ should, Captain Lovelace. After all, I only _attempted_ to kill Officer Eiffel. I never…” He trails off there, leaving the rest of his words unspoken, but the first part of his statement tells Lovelace everything that she needs to know.

She narrows her eyes at him. “Go ahead,” she encourages him. She allows herself a brief, humorless laugh that comes out more like a shiver under the oppressive conditions of the cold air. “Say it. I know you’ve all been thinking it for months. So just _say it_.”

No one responds. Hilbert and Minkowski both avoid her eyes, as if they think they can escape from further addressing the issue that Hilbert has been so kind to bring up.

“Say it!” Lovelace repeats. The shiver in her breath breaks into a harsh yell. “And then you can have that excuse to hate me that you all want so badly.”

“We don’t need excuses,” says Hera, and of course she’s the first one to capitalize on Lovelace’s invitation to lay the blame on her. “We have these amazing things called _reasons_. In plural. And they all involve you either threatening to murder someone on this crew or you _actually_ murdering someone.”

Lovelace has thought that she would be ready to hear whatever accusations the crew throws at her, but the fury in Hera’s voice and the way she says the word “murder” makes her heart race and her blood run cold. The accusation washes over her like she’s drowning, her breath caught in her throat as the familiar sensation of panic rushes through her body. Does the crew see her as no different than Hilbert, she wonders? If Hera didn’t have Minkowski to stop her, would she have vented the air from Lovelace’s quarters just as she had tried to do to Hilbert before Lovelace’s return to the station? Has everyone been cooking up a “let’s kill Lovelace” scheme behind her back the entire time that she has been on the Hephaestus? She doesn’t want to know the answers to these questions, but if the rest of the crew feels even _half_ of the hatred that she feels toward Hilbert for murdering the previous crew, then she knows that the thought of killing her must have crossed their minds at some point.

“And finally she says it.” Lovelace tries her best to keep her voice steady despite the chill in the air and the turbulence of her emotions. “I’m sorry, okay?” she continues on in the closest thing to a genuine apology that she can manage. “I didn’t know what would happen. I couldn’t have known. And--and then things went wrong.” She stumbles over her words as another shiver passes through her. “They went so, so wrong, but there was nothing I could have done. I didn’t kill Eiffel, Hera.”

“Your bomb, same difference,” Hera points out with all of the pettiness that an AI can manage.

“Hera, no.” Minkowski speaks for the first time since the blame game has shifted toward targeting Lovelace. “Stop--”

She barely gets her last word out before Hera interrupts her. “And you know what makes it all extra special?” she says. “You’re a Captain! You’re supposed to keep your crew safe. Safe from bombs and viruses and--and outer space.” Her voicebox glitches at the end of her statement, but she continues onward with no sign of stopping. “You’re supposed to protect them and make sure they _don’t_ die.”

“Hera, enough.” A note of danger enters Minkowski’s words, her jaw clenched in her anger.

“No, Commander, I--”

“I said _enough_!” Minkowski yells.

The echo of her voice fills the space of the room. Lovelace has very rarely heard her raise her voice like this. She has heard her express irritation and frustration, mostly directed at Eiffel, but throughout every hellish situation that has befallen them, Minkowski has always maintained a mostly level head. Lovelace refuses to heed her words, however. She and Hera have already gathered so much momentum in bringing the underlying current of their ugly feelings into the open, and she has no intention of stopping now.

“No,” she counters Minkowski, speaking over Hera’s equally protesting words. “She wants to have it out with me--”

“Okay, fine. _Screw it_!” Minkowski’s outburst hurtles onward at full speed, showing no signs of slowing down. “Screw our safety, and our sanity, and all the emergencies that need our attention. Have at each other!” She gestures vaguely in the direction of Lovelace and Hilbert and Hera’s all-encompassing presence. “But first, every single one of you needs to have it out with _me_.” She jabs a thumb at her own chest for emphasis.

“Commander, I--” Hera begins.

“Shut up, Hera!” Minkowski interrupts her, and the harsh words stun Hera into silence. She takes a deep breath to calm herself, but it does nothing to stop how she visibly trembles from either her anger, the cold air, or both. “ _I_ am the person who sent Eiffel out into that shuttle. I’m the person who’s supposedly in charge and never has any idea what to do. The person who can’t even get the three of you to be quiet for five minutes!”

“Commander, it is complicated situation,” says Hilbert. He moves closer to Minkowski, and if Lovelace were not wholly convinced that he lacks anything resembling empathy or even a soul, she would think that he is attempting to _comfort_ her. “You cannot--”

Minkowski rounds on him, pointing an accusatory finger in his direction. “Don’t you _dare_ ,” she retorts. “Don’t you dare try to back me up, you selfish, traitorous vulture. You are the _last_ person I want in my corner. But I am _done_ , okay? I am done trying to be above all this, and if all we’re going to do now is yell at each other, I refuse to be left out.”

Lovelace can only gape at how quickly the usually in-control commander has unraveled. She knows what that feels like, to have everything around you spiraling out of control and having no idea how to fix it even though it is the mission commander’s duty to always have at least some semblance of a plan. A strange sense of sympathy rushes through her at Minkowski’s desperation.

“Look, Minkowski--” she begins, but her words die away there in her inability to say something, _anything_ , that will make the situation better.

“Doug Eiffel is _gone_.” Minkowski’s voice breaks at the last word, splintering apart into a thousand pieces of grief. She takes a shaky breath, and when she continues on her voice is noticeably softer, no longer tinged with anger and frustration. “There was nothing we could do to save him. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It’s horrible, and pointless, and it just _happened_. Just like the cracks, and the station just keeps falling apart. And there’s nothing I can do, and I am sorry. I’m _sorry_.”

Silence falls across the freezing room. The word “cracks” echoes in Lovelace’s head, and she has no idea what Minkowski means by it. The cracks in the relationships of the crew have made themselves plenty evident over the course of the last three hours that they have spent together on the aft deck, but Lovelace suspects that she means a more literal type of crack in the structure of the station that adds another nightmarish layer to their situation.

“What do you mean by ‘cracks’?” Hilbert asks, giving voice to Lovelace’s thoughts.

And then the horrible truth comes out: the integrity of the Hephaestus has been compromised, with severe stress fractures running through the majority of the station’s systems. The words “end of operational life” and “this is not a thing we fix” hit Lovelace like a punch to the gut. Indefinite survival on the station will no longer be a tenable solution, not unless Minkowski’s twice-a-day distress calls get picked up sometime in the next few weeks. Building a new shuttle is no longer an option, either, not when they only have a few months at the most before the station decays beyond survivable conditions and most of the infrastructure is too damaged to cannibalize into a working spacecraft. There’s nothing like the reminder of inevitable death to put things into perspective, and for Lovelace, that perspective comes with the realization that now may be the time for the crew to pursue the option that she has been so adamantly against: asking Command for help.

After the dust has settled and the thermal system’s reactivation has brought the station to far less Siberian conditions, Lovelace finds Minkowski on the bridge and gives her the go-ahead to call Canaveral. She leaves to give her some privacy while making the call--after all, Lovelace’s presence on the station is the one secret that Minkowski, Eiffel, and Hera had managed to keep during the last time that Cutter checked in with them. Everything about those few days before the star turned blue, when their biggest concerns were Eiffel’s recovery from his Decima outbreak and whether they will ever get the shuttle running properly, seems so far away now.

Lovelace is left restless as she waits for Minkowski to report back with the verdict from the call to Command. Hilbert has been escorted back to his observation deck cell as soon as the crew became free to leave the aft deck, and Hera remains quiet as she attends to all of the tasks and processes necessary to counteract the debilitating effects of the station’s cracks for as long as possible. With no one to talk to and no repairs to take care of, Lovelace makes herself a cup of of coffee and retreats to her quarters. After the stress of the day, she'd probably be better off trying to rack up a couple hours of sleep, but she doubts she will be able to fall asleep easily with everything that weighs on her mind. Instead, she lets herself float aimlessly while looking out the small, round window that gives her a perfect view of the endless black void of space and the blue light that emanates from Wolf 359. She drinks from her cup of coffee, wondering how the hell she is going to get herself out of this latest nightmare if Command refuses to send the rescue that the crew sorely needs.

The problem with having time to think is that it plants all kinds of strange ideas into Lovelace’s head: passing thoughts and fleeting whispers that make her examine herself and her situation more closely than she would do if she were busying herself with an all-important task. Today’s dose of strange ideas reminds her that no matter how hopeless conditions on the station have become, she has one thing that she did not have in her final days during her last stint on the Hephaestus, and that is strength in numbers. Not that she expects herself to shake hands with Hilbert and forgive him for everything that he has done, but it is not too late to develop at least a shaky camaraderie with the others. She has tried to learn her lesson from the loss of her previous crew, that there is no use in making friends if she will only have to endure the pain of losing them, but with the very real possibility of her own death looming on the horizon, perhaps it is time for her to revise that stance. Anything is better than the alternative of dying alone, after all.

“Hera?” she says after taking a breath to prepare herself.

“Yes, Captain?” Hera replies. Her voice sounds subdued and weary, as if she is as sick of all of this bullshit as Lovelace is. “What do you need?”

“I…” Lovelace hesitates, struggling to find the words she wants to say. Apologies and making amends have always been something that is easier said than done for her, especially when she and Hera do not necessarily have the best history of getting along. She takes a sip of her coffee to fill the silence between them before she speaks. “I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier today. That all of the station’s malfunctions were your fault and that you weren’t doing your job. I know you don’t have the greatest track record on this station, but I shouldn’t have blamed you, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” says Hera. “I think all of us were under a lot of stress and everything just kind of came out. It’s been a hard few months for everyone, after all.”

Lovelace gives a bitter laugh. “Yeah, you can say that again.”

Neither of them speaks for a moment. Then, with a softness in her voice that conveys a level of sincerity that Lovelace has rarely heard from her, Hera says, “I don’t really think that you killed Officer Eiffel, Captain.”

The anger that had been in Hera’s voice when she’d accused Lovelace of murder echoes in her head. “You certainly sounded like you thought it,” Lovelace points out. “You and Hilbert both.”

“I mean, maybe I did,” Hera replies. “In that moment. And in all of the moments before it. But you and Commander Minkowski are right. It happened, and it was horrible, and maybe I was just looking for someone to blame because it made everything easier.”

“I understand,” says Lovelace. “Eiffel was your friend. And I know how hard it is to lose friends.” The names of everyone she has lost still cycle through her head in an endless loop-- _Fisher, Lambert, Hui, Fourier, Rhea_ \--and those are only the most recent (but also the most painful) losses she has endured. And for Hera, someone who has likely only discovered the true value of friendship in the time that she has been part of the Hephaestus’s crew, Lovelace is sure that Eiffel’s absence has hit her even harder.

“So…” Hera begins, with the inevitable awkwardness of “where do we go from here” inherent in the single word.

“I don’t expect you to immediately forgive me,” Lovelace says. If she were in Hera’s position, she would certainly not be able to let go of her feelings of resentment easily. “And I don’t expect us to become the best of friends or anything. But I’m glad we were able to clear the air a little.”

“Me too,” replies Hera. “But I’m surprised. You don’t seem like the type who likes making nice. And if you start cozying up to Hilbert--”

Lovelace laughs. “Trust me, it’ll take a _lot_ to get me to do that. And considering the very real possibility that we may all die out here, that’s saying something.” Unequivocal murder is much different than a tragic accident outside of anyone’s control, after all, and she expects Hera to be able to recognize that difference. “But it’s like what I said to Minkowski when I told her to call Command. Sometimes it’s better to let cooler heads prevail at times like this.”

She drinks up the last of her cup of coffee and sets it aside. The travel mug floats lazily in the space of her quarters, but for now she does not bother to secure it anywhere. “Speaking of Minkowski,” she says. “Is she still talking to Command? It’s been, what, almost an hour since she made the call? You’d think she would have called for a meeting by now to tell us what they said.”

“I…” Hera hesitates, as if she is not sure how to respond. “No, she’s not talking to them right now, but she’s still on the bridge. I don’t think you should--”

She does not have a chance to finish her words before Lovelace springs into action. What bad news could Minkowski have possibly received from Command to make her not want to immediately convey the message the rest of the crew? It certainly cannot have been any good news. After everything that has happened today, surely she would have wanted to tell the crew something good for a change, something like “Command is sending a shuttle to get us as soon as possible” or “We’re finally going home.” Lovelace’s trust in Command has run out long ago, however, and so she is completely unsurprised at the prospect of them not being as helpful as Minkowski has hoped.

“Captain?” Hera asks as Lovelace crosses the small space of her quarters to reach the door. “What are you--”

“Let her know that I’m coming up,” says Lovelace. “Okay?”

“I--yes, sir.”

Lovelace makes her way to the bridge, trying and failing to dismiss her deepening suspicion that perhaps calling Command has done nothing but worsen their situation. She hates how her time on the Hephaestus has caused her mind to always jump to the worst-case scenario, but after everything that has happened, after knowing the Command has never cared about the crew of the station and will gladly let them die without hesitation, she refuses to allow herself to hold onto anything resembling hope. Not when all signs point to the call not going as well as it should have.

When she reaches the door to the bridge, she receives no reply to the courtesy knock that she gives. “Minkowski?” she calls through the door. “I’m coming in.”

The continued lack of response is enough for her to push open the door. Unsure of what she will find inside, she enters the bridge and shuts the door behind her. Minkowski is hunched over the controls for the pulse-beacon relay, and Lovelace’s entrance has elicited no reaction from her. It’s as if she is in her own world, one that does not involve telling the crew what has happened.

“Minkowski,” Lovelace says again. “What did Command say?”

Slowly, Minkowski straightens up. Her deep breath shakes on the way out, and that trembling exhale is enough to confirm Lovelace’s suspicions that nothing has gone as planned. Minkowski remains facing away from her, but she still hears her quiet words.

“They didn’t respond.”

“ _What_?” Lovelace has expected to hear news of swift dismissals of concerns and insistent statements that the mission must proceed as scheduled, but Command flat-out ignoring them--that is a new low. With the pulse-beacon relay providing a direct line to Cutter, the only options are that the relay is too damaged to effectively communicate with Earth, or that he is blatantly disregarding a communications hail from his _favorite_ deep space mission crew. Neither outcome provides a hopeful prospect. “Nobody picked up? Nobody said anything at all?”

Minkowski shakes her head. “It was… It was just static. If Eiffel were here, I might have been able to get him to do something about the connection, see if the call was actually going through or if it was a problem on our end, but…”

She breaks off there and buries her face in her hands. Everything about her looks so defeated, even more so than she had been on the freezing aft deck when she had taken responsibility for everything that has gone wrong on the station over the past few months. This is not the Minkowski who Lovelace has gotten to know during her recent time on the Hephaestus. This is the Minkowski who has been gradually breaking down as the current situation gets worse and worse, and now she has been pushed over the edge into utter hopelessness.

Lovelace approaches her cautiously, unsure if she wants to intrude upon her during such a vulnerable moment. She sees the trembling of Minkowski’s shoulders and hears a shuddering sound that resembles a sob, and that alone is enough for her to reach out and lay a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Hey,” Lovelace says softly. “It’ll be--” She does not finish the thought, because she cannot in good conscience say that everything will be okay. Looking for silver linings is not Lovelace’s strong point, and it leaves her lacking in the comfort department.

She isn’t sure how Minkowski will react, whether she will flinch back from her touch or push her hand away. What she does _not_ expect, however, is for Minkowski to turn toward her, her eyes damp with tears that cannot be properly shed in zero-gravity conditions, and collapse against her. Her body shakes with another sob as she clings to her, and Lovelace hesitates for only the slightest moment before wrapping her arms around her. After everything that has happened, everyone on the station probably needs a hug right now--well, except for Hilbert, whose black void of a soul will never be deemed worthy of a hug if Lovelace has anything to say about it.

“I’m sorry,” Minkowski says, her voice muffled against Lovelace’s shoulder. “You must think I’m an idiot, crying on you like this. Some commander I am, not even able to hold myself together when everything’s gone to hell.”

She lifts her head and rubs a hand across her eyes to dislodge the tears that have formed there, giving an inelegant sniffle as she does so. Lovelace lets go of her to give her the space to regain her bearings. If there were any tissues around, she would have offered them to her, but instead Minkowski has no choice but to wipe her nose on the sleeve of her shirt.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” she continues on. “The fact that there was no response or what I would have had to hear from Mr. Cutter if he had answered.” She adopts a poor imitation of a male voice. “‘Oh, Renée, don’t tell me you’re requesting mission termination _again_? That you’re too much of a failure to suck it up and do your job, and now one of your crew members is missing in action and the station has cracks in it that can’t be fixed? Whatever _did_ go wrong?’”

“You’re not a failure,” Lovelace tells her. God knows the two of them have had their disagreements over the choices that Minkowski has made while in command of the station, but her competence has rarely come into question. Considering the new crop of horrors that have shown themselves on this iteration of the Hephaestus mission, Minkowski has done a damn good job at keeping everything more or less under control. And if Command cannot see that--well, it doesn’t matter. Lovelace has long since disregarded their opinion on anything after discovering how disposable they consider their deep space mission crews.

Minkowski scoffs in disbelief. “I am, though. Just look at everything that’s happened. A good commander would have kept a better eye on the infrastructure and noticed the cracks before they became too severe to repair. A good commander wouldn’t have let Eiffel go onto a shuttle with a bomb on it when its detonator could have easily gone off. A good commander would have been able to fix everything before her crew started screaming at each other looking for someone to blame. This was my _dream_ , Lovelace. Working in space and having my own command. And all I’ve ever done is mess everything up.”

“Listen to me.” Lovelace grips Minkowski’s shoulders. “You can’t blame yourself for this. And believe me, I know how easy it is to think that way. I know what it’s like to watch everything crumble around you until the situation is just so, so bad that you have no idea how you’re ever going to get out of it. I know what it’s like to feel abandoned and alone here, and to lose friends and know that Command will never care. Believe me, I _know_. But if you’re a failure, then so am I, and I for one refuse to give up and let Command think that they’ve won by breaking us down from the people we used to be.”

At first Minkowski does not respond. Then, with a quiet exhale of breath, she says, “Yes. You’re right. I won’t let them break me. I won’t let them.” She repeats her last statement in a softer tone, as if she is saying it to herself instead of Lovelace.

“Good,” says Lovelace. “That’s a start.”

Their eyes meet. Minkowski touches one of Lovelace’s hands that rests on her shoulder, and the gesture sends a flood of confusion through Lovelace before she realizes that Minkowski is moving her hands away from her in a silent indication of no longer needing physical encouragement. In Minkowski’s eyes she sees the desperation that has driven her to this place of self-doubt, but she also detects a hidden glimpse of determination that proves that she has not given up quite yet.

“So what’s your plan?” Minkowski asks.

Lovelace raises her eyebrows in inquiry. “My plan?”

“Back when we were fixing your shuttle, before everything happened with the star, you went off on me for not having a plan for getting off the station and wasting my time with other things instead. And since I obviously still don’t have a plan, I was hoping you could share any ideas you have.”

Well. Lovelace has not anticipated Minkowski to turn her words against her like this. She opens her mouth and then closes it again, unsure whether she wants to tell her that for the first time in a long while, she is flying blind with no course to direct her other than her desire to personally murder everyone at Command who is responsible for the Hephaestus missions.

“Telling you to call Canaveral was the last plan I had left,” she admits. “Other than that, the only plan I have is to not die. Somehow.” It’s part of the mantra that has been playing constantly in her head since her return to the Hephaestus: _Don’t die. Be a big girl, and don’t die_. As conditions on the station worsen, she has had an increasingly harder time believing those words.

“Not dying, huh?” Minkowski echoes her. “Right. We have our work cut out for us there.”

Lovelace gives a humorless laugh. “No one said anything on this station was going to be easy.” After a brief internal battle of whether she is veering too much into the territory of caring, something she swore she wouldn’t do during this go-round on the Hephaestus, she adds, “Are you going to be okay?”

“As okay as I can be in the current circumstances.” Minkowski takes another deep, calming breath. “Thank you, Lovelace. For talking some sense into me.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Lovelace replies. “I may not be good at optimism, but I think I gave it my best shot.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I heard some optimism hidden away in there.” A brief silence falls between them before Minkowski continues on. “Anyway, I’ll let you know if there’s any work I need your help with. You should get some rest for now.”

“So should you, Commander,” says Lovelace, although she suspects that Minkowski will disregard sleep just as much as she herself does in the coming days. “It’s been a long day.”

Minkowski’s sigh of “You can say that again” heralds their parting of ways, and before Lovelace passes through the door to leave the bridge, she casts a glance back at Minkowski and wonders when exactly she started caring about the station’s commander.


	3. Chapter 3

The situation on the Hephaestus proceeds about as well as it can in the days following the revelation that the station itself is dying. The underlying current of tension among the crew members has mostly dissipated, now that they have addressed some of the issues between them and realized that there are more important things at stake than their grudges and accusations. Hera’s polite and friendly words sound far less forced whenever she and Lovelace converse, and she has dropped the passive-aggressive edge in her voice almost entirely. Hilbert is… well, he’s still Hilbert, and Lovelace is happy that she only has to see him in moments of passing with nothing but a brusque exchange of “Captain” and “Doctor” between them. And then there’s Minkowski, and Lovelace cannot figure out how to describe the change in their interactions over the past several days. The only conclusion she has reached is that Minkowski crying on her shoulder on the bridge has served as a bonding moment for them. It’s not quite the development of a friendship, not yet, but Lovelace cannot deny that _something_ is brewing between them.

One morning, Lovelace wakes from the few hours of sleep that she has managed to get and proceeds with her normal routine, grabbing a quick breakfast and cup of coffee in the mess before checking in with Minkowski for her first repair rotation. In light of the station’s current condition, “repairs” increasingly feel like patching holes in a sinking ship with duct tape and hoping that will prevent everyone from drowning for a little while longer, but Lovelace does her duties with minimal complaints. Until she comes up with an escape plan, she has no right to criticize Minkowski’s method of keeping everyone busy by pressing forward with the schedule of repairs.

The average start to Lovelace’s morning grinds to a halt when she passes by the comms room and hears the faint sound of music coming from inside it. At first she thinks it’s one of the mysterious transmissions that Eiffel had spent his time on the Hephaestus searching for, but those had all been varieties of instrumental music, classical or otherwise. The music that comes from behind the door of the comms room now is far more… _theatrical_.

Lovelace opens the door to find Minkowski working at one of the comms consoles. The outside of the console has been stripped open, revealing its mechanical innards, With a toolbox floating beside her, Minkowski tends to the exposed parts to the sound of something that suspiciously resembles a showtune. And a highly ironic showtune at that, judging from the song’s optimistic refrain about what a beautiful morning it is.

“What are you doing?” Lovelace asks.

Minkowski looks up from where she has been unscrewing one of the interior parts of the panel. “I was planning on sending out the morning’s distress call, but then the comms system started acting up and Hera said she can’t repair it remotely. So now it’s time for me to play handyman when I only have a vague idea of what I’m doing.”

“And what’s with the music?”

Minkowski gives a long-suffering sigh. “You tell bad jokes to keep yourself calm, I listen to showtunes. It’s _comforting_.”

Her tone is inescapably defensive, as if she expects a mocking reply. There is indeed something incongruous about Minkowski enjoying musicals, and part of Lovelace _does_ want to laugh herself silly over it. Now is not the time for her to question anyone’s coping mechanisms, however. For all she cares, Minkowski can perform a whole song and dance routine in the middle of the comms room as long as it gets her through her work.

“Do you need a hand?” Lovelace inquires. “I’m no communications officer, but I might be able to help you figure out what’s going on with the systems.”

“I have that part figured out. I’m pretty sure it’s in the wiring.” Minkowski returns to unscrewing the part of the panel that she is removing. “But it _would_ be helpful to have someone to flip the switches to see if what I’m doing is actually helping.”

“Awesome.” Lovelace does not bother to keep the sarcasm out of her voice at having been put on tech support duty yet again. She goes over to the part of the comms console that houses the controls for the communications array. “Let me know when you need me to do the thing.”

It’s strange for her to be working here in the comms room. During her first stint on the Hephaestus, the room had been strictly Lambert’s territory, where she would try to make him laugh every time she came in to check on his progress, and until recently it had been Eiffel’s territory. Lovelace remembers the first time the two of them had a proper conversation that didn’t involve a gun pointed at her, when he’d found her encroaching on his comms room and they’d ended up having a laugh together at his stories of plant monsters and the Empty Man. Eiffel’s work ethic and competence level may have left a lot to be desired, but in him Lovelace sometimes saw shades of the woman she used to be before Command took everything away from her.

“Sorry, but I have to ask,” she says as the music continues. “The showtunes. What… How…” She trails off there, unsure of which question she wants to ask.

“Yes, yes, you probably think it’s absolutely hilarious that I like musicals.” Minkowski gives a slight scowl as she takes out a smaller screwdriver from the toolbox. “Was there a proper question somewhere in there?”

“How’d that interest… come about?” asks Lovelace. She hesitates around her words, trying to sound genuinely intrigued with only the slightest trace of mockery.

“Hmm. It’s something that has always been with me, I guess. When I was a kid, my parents took me to the theatre a lot, especially after we moved to the U.S. And as I got older, it stuck with me.” Minkowski takes out the last few screws she needs to fully expose the wiring that requires her attention. “Here, can you hold onto these screws for me?” she says. “I don’t want to lose them.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lovelace replies.

Minkowski presses the small screws into the palm of Lovelace’ outstretched hand before returning her attention to the console. “And then,” she continues on, “it also became a tradition that for our anniversary, my husband and I would have a nice dinner somewhere and then see a show together. He’s a fan of theatre as well.”

Lovelace nearly drops the screws that she holds in her hand. “You’re married?” she inquires. _Married to a man_ , she wants to add, but that opens up an entirely new question that she should probably not pursue right now.

Minkowski makes a noise of exasperation. “Why do people always sound surprised to hear that? Is there something so fundamentally un-marriable about me that even _Hera_ thought that the mention of a spouse in my personnel file was a ‘really weird typo’?” She puts air quotes around the last words as best as she can with a screwdriver in her hand.

“No, not exactly,” Lovelace replies. “It’s just not what I expected.” She has had no reason to suspect anything, after all. Minkowski does not wear a wedding ring, at least not on her finger, and it’s not like the crew is in the habit of telling each other about their personal lives--except for now, apparently. A thousand questions race through her mind regarding Minkowski’s marriage, but the one the stands out most prominently is why having a husband waiting for her back home on Earth has not been a larger motivator for her. Surely that would have warranted a little more desperation from her, a little more willingness to do whatever it takes to leave the station no matter what the cost.

“So that must be hard for you, being away from your husband,” Lovelace continues on. “Especially now that we’re trapped on the U.S.S. Decaying Hellhole with absolutely no contact from anyone and no way to go home.” She does not realize how pessimistic her words sound until after she has said them, but she does not make any attempt to soften them. Softening the reality of a situation is not part of her vocabulary.

“Well, yes,” replies Minkowski. “But I just take things one day at a time. I can’t let myself dwell on it. There are more important things to--oh, god _damn_ it.”

A spark from the recently exposed wiring discharges with a soft crackle. Minkowski recoils her hand from inside the comms console and presses the injured fingers against her mouth, sucking on them to alleviate the sharp burst of pain that the spark has likely caused. The motion elicits a surge of hungry warmth within Lovelace, immediately followed by a frantic thought of _oh no_. She is _not_ getting turned on by Minkowski making repairs, because that would be ridiculous--and highly inappropriate, considering she has just learned that Minkowski is married. She pushes the thought out of her mind and tries to look anywhere but the junction of Minkowski’s fingers and lips.

“Hera?” Minkowski asks. “Did you remember to discharge the comms console’s electrical current before I started sticking my fingers into it?”

“Hold on, let me check… Oh, no, Commander, I’m so sorry.” Hera’s hurried apology echoes through the loudspeaker. “I’ll take care of that right away. Just a moment.”

“That’s all right, take your--” Minkowski barely has time to get the words out before Hera continues with “Electrical current discharged, sir. Sorry again for not doing it earlier.”

“It’s okay, Hera.” Minkowski speaks with carefully constructed patience that attempts to hide the frustration and annoyance that everyone on the station feels whenever Hera makes a mistake. “Thank you.”

She returns to her work on the console now that she is in less danger of electrocution. Lovelace’s hand clenches more tightly around the screws in her hand to keep them in her grasp. She refuses to interpret the silence that has fallen between them as awkward, especially in light of the recent thoughts that have made themselves alarmingly present in her mind. In the lack of words exchanged between them, she notices that a new song has started up. Its upbeat melody mocks the quiet bleakness that has settled throughout the station over the past couple of weeks.

“What about you?” Minkowski asks.

“What do you mean, what about me?”

“You must have people waiting for you on Earth too.” Minkowski looks up at Lovelace as she rummages through the toolbox. “I suppose I shouldn’t assume that you don’t have a boyfriend or a husband or anything like that back home.”

Lovelace laughs. “Nope, definitely no boyfriend or husband.” With the inevitable hesitation that occurs whenever she’s about to share this piece of information about herself, she adds, “No girlfriend or wife either.”

“Oh,” is all Minkowski says in response. There’s a note of surprise in her voice, but nothing that resembles negative judgment. She continues to search through the toolbox until she pulls out a set of pliers and a roll of electrical tape. “But there must be at least _some_ people on Earth who you’re eager to see again.”

“Sure,” Lovelace replies. “Family and friends who maybe weren’t so thrilled at the idea of me going on a deep space mission.” _Eight light years is a long way from home, Isabel,_ her parents had said when she’d shared the good news that she’d accepted a position as a mission commander for a deep space survey--as if they weren’t used to her being deployed halfway around the world, in a remote location, or both for her work with the Air Force. Back then, she’d foolishly thought that being so far from Earth (and any disapproving superiors) would have been the perfect job for her, but now she regrets her choice more than ever after everything that has happened.

But as much as her desire to return home has driven her, the thought of being back on Earth puts her at a loss as to what she will _do_ once she gets there. How does she proceed after the hell that she has been through on the Hephaestus, other than storming the headquarters of Goddard Futuristics with a big-ass bomb? How can she possibly return to a normal life with normal people who can’t even begin to understand what she has had to endure? She’s no stranger to returning home after a deployment and struggling to find that normalcy again, but never before this mission has the thought crossed her mind that perhaps there is no place for the person she is now in the life waiting for her back on Earth.

 _You can never go home_ , the voices in her head remind her. _You_ were  _home. And now you’re back. And you can never go back._

“You’ve definitely been away for a lot longer than they’ve expected,” says Minkowski, breaking Lovelace away from her thoughts.

“Yeah.” The word leaves her mouth in a quiet exhale. “Honestly, I…” She hesitates, unsure of whether she wants to admit the thought that has been in the back of her mind for quite some time but has never been voiced aloud. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone on Earth was told I was dead.”

“What?” The pliers in Minkowski’s hand slip out of her grip. She grabs hold of them once more and stares at Lovelace in disbelief. “Why would you--”

“You guys were convinced I was dead before I showed up on the station again,” Lovelace replies. “And Command told Hilbert that my shuttle crashed into the star. Is it really that much of a stretch to think that they would have told that same story in their mission report back on Earth?” A complete loss of the crew through tragic circumstances makes for a cleaner story, after all. Maybe Hilbert is dead in Command’s version of events as well. _Selberg_ is certainly dead, at any rate, and now Hilbert is his unholy resurrection.

“They’d never--” Minkowski begins, but she breaks off there, already sounding uncertain in her words.

“You know what Command is capable of,” says Lovelace. “Would you really be surprised if they did something like that?”

“I suppose not.”

Minkowski turns her attention back to the console, carefully repairing the wiring into something more cooperative. She rubs her forehead with her free hand, her brow furrowed in concentration. Lovelace tries not to watch her too closely as she works, not wanting to return to those questions of “How long have I been attracted to her? How long have I _cared_ about her?” Emotional entanglements are the last thing she needs right now, especially when her situation is so grim. Even if the circumstances weren’t so dire, Minkowski’s mention of her marriage has placed her solidly in the “unavailable” category. However fleeting these feelings are, Lovelace is better off cutting them off at the source before things get too complicated.

She instead focuses on the song that still plays in the background. Maybe it’s because she has not been paying much attention to it until now, but the lyrics have become increasingly incomprehensible to her. “God, this song,” she says. “What the hell is a surrey with the fringe on top?”

Minkowski laughs. It’s no more than a brief chuckle, but it turns up the corners of her mouth into the first genuine smile that Lovelace has seen from her since Eiffel has been gone. “It’s a type of carriage,” she replies. “He wants to take the girl he likes out on a date and is trying to woo her.”

“Yeah, he sounds like a real charmer. Carriage rides, how enticing.”

“It was a simpler time back in turn-of-the-century Oklahoma.” Minkowski returns the pliers and electrical tape back to the toolbox and brushes off her hands on her pants. “All right. Let’s see if that did the trick. Hera, can you reroute the power back to the comms system?”

“Yes, sir,” Hera confirms. “One moment, please.”

“I already have the radio tuned to the right frequency,” Minkowski says to Lovelace. “If you could make sure the receiver is booting up properly and getting a signal, then that’s one problem crossed off the list.”

“Roger that.” Lovelace slides the screws that she has been holding into one of her pockets so that she can flip the switch that turns on the receiver. The lights on the communications array flicker to life as it searches for a signal. “Everything looks good so far. Outgoing signals are all nominal.”

Minkowski sighs in relief. “Oh, thank God. I _really_ didn’t want to deal with anything more complicated than patching some wires. Can you turn the music off so I can send out the distress call?”

Lovelace pushes off from her position at the comms panel to reach where Minkowski has hooked up her iPod to a set of speakers. As Minkowski moves toward Lovelace’s previous position, their trajectories collide in a brushing of bodies against each other. Minkowski grabs hold of Lovelace to steady herself, gripping her upper arm tightly before she clears her throat and quickly withdraws her hand. Lovelace doesn’t know whether she is imagining the heat that she sees rising to Minkowski’s face before they move past each other. She _has_ to be. Minkowski is definitely not the type of woman to blush at unexpected physical contact, but then again, Lovelace has now come to the conclusion that perhaps she shouldn’t be making any kind of assumptions about Minkowski.

She pauses the iPod’s playback and hangs back from the comms console as Minkowski waits to hear the static that indicates that the system is ready to send out her message. Minkowski takes a breath to prepare herself before she speaks into the receiver.

“Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan. All stations. This is an urgent distress call from the U.S.S. Hephaestus Station. One hundred and twenty-nine days ago, we encountered an undocumented astrophysical phenomenon. The event left severe damage on multiple systems. One of our crew members is missing in action. Station operational status compromised. Requesting immediate assistance from any available craft. Please respond.” She pauses, waiting in vain to hear a voice on the other end, but the only response she receives is the steady sound of static. “I say again: requesting immediate assistance. Please respond.”

No voices come from the receiver. The continued static echoes throughout the room for what feels like an age before Minkowski gives a heavy sigh and switches off the receiver. How many times has she had to endure this, Lovelace wonders? Two distress calls a day multiplied by over a hundred days that have passed since the star turned blue--that makes more than two hundred times that Minkowski has listened to static with the false hope that maybe, just _maybe_ , someone will respond to her pleas for help this time. How long must this continue? How long will it take before they get themselves out of this loop of spending day after day with nothing to do but hold off their inevitable deaths for as long a possible as they wait for help?

“Well,” Minkowski says. She takes a bracing inhale of a breath. “We’ll just have to hope for next time.”

“How long are you going to keep sending out these distress calls?” asks Lovelace. “I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but how do you know your calls are actually getting out there? You’d think at least _someone_ would have responded by now if they were.”

“I’ll do it for as long as it takes.” The hard edge in Minkowski’s voice indicates that she does not want to start a debate on the matter. “No matter how many calls I have to make, I’m not going to give up.”

Lovelace cannot argue with her stubborn persistence, even if by this point general distress calls are a fruitless endeavor. She approaches the comms console and takes the screws from her pocket. “Here,” she says, holding them out for Minkowski to take. “So you can get the comms systems back in order now that you’re done playing handyman.”

“Thank you.” Minkowski’s hand brushes against hers when she grabs the screws. Their eyes meet at the contact. “You should, um… You have your morning repair work in the hangar bay to take care of, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” How quickly Lovelace has forgotten that checking in with Minkowski before starting her repair rotation is what has brought her to the comms room. “You’re all set here?”

Minkowski nods. “It shouldn’t take long to put the casing back on the comms console. That’s one emergency averted for now, I guess.”

Their hands still linger near each other’s. Lovelace waits for the moment that Minkowski takes her hand away and averts her gaze, but the moment does not come. Instead, Lovelace is the first one to move away, and before she turns to leave the room, she knows she is not imagining the lingering look that Minkowski gives her before they part ways and the sound of music from within the comms room begins again.


	4. Chapter 4

It is Lovelace’s strict personal policy to not mix business and pleasure when it comes to romantic entanglements with her colleagues. She has certainly faced temptations over the years, but she has always been careful to avoid blurring those lines. Now, however, she must face the increasingly obvious problem that is her attraction toward Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski--who, to add to the normal list of reasons why she should not get involved with a colleague, is a) married, b) most likely terminally heterosexual, and c) the commanding officer of a space station that is sinking into an irreversible state of disrepair. It’s a perfect storm of why falling for her would be a _colossally_ bad idea, but unfortunately Lovelace’s emotions have zero interest in listening to reason. Instead, she must now figure out how to handle these highly inconvenient feelings in a situation in which she has sworn to not let herself get attached to anyone.

It should have been easy for her to disregard her attraction. Even though in many ways Minkowski is the perfect woman for her--strong, take-charge, and more than capable of keeping up with her--she is one hundred percent off limits. As much as it sucks to have feelings for a woman who is married and probably straight, Lovelace has dealt with situations like these before, and she will get over her feelings with time. But of course, because nothing in her life can ever be easy, there has to be an added layer of complications. Maybe it’s just false hope, but Lovelace cannot be entirely convinced that Minkowski has not been showing signs of interest in her as well. The past several days have been filled with lingering looks and brief touches that definitely hadn’t been there before they started being on better terms with each other. If Minkowski does not mean those gestures as hesitant, silent attempts at flirtation, then she is a master at sending mixed signals.

But if there’s one thing that Lovelace cannot do, it is allowing her feelings to fester inside of her. She refuses to tiptoe around the situation and dither with the question of whether anything will happen or not. She prides herself in confronting every issue that she faces head-on, and even if it means making a fool out of herself in front of Minkowski, the worst thing that can happen is that she will have a sure-fire reason to not further pursue her feelings. Of course, the inevitable awkwardness that will color their future interactions if Lovelace has misinterpreted the situation will be a problem too, but she prefers to take things one step at a time.

With the crew’s lives on a timetable unless a mode of transportation miraculously shows up on the station’s doorstep, Lovelace decides she has to rip off the metaphorical Band-Aid as soon as she has a stretch of time alone with Minkowski a couple of weeks after she has suspected the possibility of mutual attraction. The moment comes when they are working a rotation together on the bridge, with Minkowski recalibrating the navigations computer while Lovelace patches up some minor structural damage in the interior walls. It’s not long before Lovelace ends up catching Minkowski glancing in her direction on occasion as she works, in a way that doesn’t suggest that she is merely checking on her progress. At least she has proven to be predictable in her possibly flirtatious behavior.

“Ugh, _Eiffel_ ,” Minkowski groans as she returns her attention to the computer, pretending that Lovelace hasn’t seen her looking up toward the ceiling where she is working. “It’s just like him to somehow manage to find ways to annoy me even when he’s not here.”

“What did he do this time?” Lovelace asks.

“Oh, just his terminal memory problems when it came to updating the star charts coming back to bite the rest of us in the ass when the system randomly decided to roll back to the last available data from before the star changed color. Which, if you remember from the last time we chewed him out about it, was from _over a year and a half ago_.”

Lovelace doesn’t know whether she should laugh or sigh in exasperation, which sums up the majority of her encounters with Eiffel and his staggering incompetence. “God. Tell me again how we haven’t fallen to our fiery deaths in the star by now?”

“I ask myself that every day, to be honest.” Minkowski inputs a few more keystrokes into the computer. “Hera? _Please_ tell me you have the backup data from the last few updates to the star charts that you can upload to the nav computer.”

“Yes, sir,” Hera replies. “Uploading data now.”

Lovelace returns to her work on removing one of the damaged ceiling panels. The cracks in the bridge’s walls and ceiling are not as serious as the stress fractures whose impact has sealed the station’s expiration date, but Hera has expressed enough concern about their loss of integrity possibly affecting exterior structure that it has become a mid-priority task to attend to. This particular panel has proven to be especially stubborn in Lovelace’s attempts to remove it to determine the extent of the damage behind it. Normally she would not be opposed to using brute force instead of a tool to get the job done, but with the structure already compromised she cannot risk causing any more damage. She searches the toolbox beside her to find something to give her the leverage needed to pry it open.

“Hey, Minkowski,” she says upon finding nothing in her search. “There wouldn’t happen to be a crowbar floating around here anywhere, would there?”

Minkowski looks up from where she has been waiting for the nav computer to finish downloading and incorporating the data that Hera has sent. “There’s not one in the toolbox?”

“Not unless it’s hiding really well.” Lovelace pushes off to float down toward the door. “I think there might be one in the supply closet in engineering. I’m going to go check.”

“You could always ask the plant monster,” suggests Minkowski with the sense of deadpan humor that always takes Lovelace by surprise when she is reminded that yes, Minkowski _is_ capable of making a joke every now and then. Lovelace has never actually seen the crew’s sentient botanical roommate in the time since she has returned to the Hephaestus, but she has heard the movements of its tendrils throughout the station, along with the stories of how it almost took control of the station via possession of Hilbert’s body, stole a screwdriver to build a nightlight, and spent the three weeks prior to Lovelace’s return being the mark in Minkowski’s foray into recreational monster hunting. She is perfectly content to honor the crew’s arrangement of leaving the plant monster in peace, having already experienced enough strange occurrences on the Hephaestus to last her a lifetime.

“I don’t even _want_ to know what a plant would want with a crowbar,” Lovelace replies. She approaches the door to leave the bridge, but before she can open it, Hera’s voice cuts through the loudspeaker.

“Um, you may not want to go out there, Captain,” she says.

Lovelace keeps one hand on the door handle, but she does not push it open. “Why not?”

“Oh, nothing,” Hera replies, her voice sounding a little too hasty to be truthful. “It’s just that I _may_ have encountered a teeny-tiny issue with the life support systems, so you probably want to stay here on the bridge unless you plan on, um, not breathing.”

“ _What_?” Lovelace demands. She withdraws her hand from the door handle as if it has burned her.

“Hera,” says Minkowski in the tone that Lovelace has heard her use far too often with Hera whenever one of her functions goes wrong. “What’s going on?”

“It’s fine. I have everything under control,” Hera assures her. “I’ve prioritized system functions so that the two of you will have enough oxygen in here, but that also means that the oxygen levels everywhere else on the station are rapidly dropping. I’ll have to run some fixes on the system and reset a couple of things, but after that everything will be back at nominal. You’ll just need to stay put for, oh, maybe the next five to ten minutes while I do that.”

“Great,” Lovelace says, making no effort to hide her sarcasm.

She moves away from the door and floats up to where she has left the toolbox. One more quick search through its contents confirms that it still lacks anything she can use to pry off the ceiling panel, and so that leaves her stuck in more ways than one. Trapped on the bridge unable to finish her task with Minkowski as her only company--if this is not an opportune moment, then she doesn’t know what is.

The resumed sound of Minkowski typing at the navigations computer comes to an abrupt halt. “Hera,” she says, “does Hilbert have an air supply in his lab? One that will keep him alive and breathing while you fix whatever problems you’re having?”

“Ugh, _yes_ , Commander,” replies Hera with unmistakable exasperation. “Do you really think I’d try the same trick twice after everything that has happened? I have to play nice with him now, remember? Captain Lovelace can back me up on this one.”

“We _have_ done an excellent job at not killing Hilbert so far,” Lovelace agrees. Especially considering how Minkowski has put him on a longer leash lately, probably as a reward for his good behavior in helping with repairs. He has even been permitted to work in his lab again for short stretches of time during his off-rotation hours (“Doing experiments is probably stress relief for him,” Minkowski had said in defense of her decision, glossing over the issue that many of his experiments have the exact opposite effect on the rest of the crew).

“Yes, and that’s all well and good,” says Minkowski, “but I’d feel much better if you could give me his vocal confirmation that he’s okay.”

Hera makes a noise of frustration. “ _Fine_. Patching him through my comms right now.” With her voice adopting the familiar veneer of forced politeness, she relays the words that she exchanges with Hilbert through the bridge’s loudspeaker. “Dr. Hilbert, Commander Minkowski would like to hear your confirmation that you are alive and breathing.”

“Yes, I am,” Hilbert replies. After a wavering pause of suspicious hesitation, he adds, “Why?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just a few hiccups in the life support system. As long as you don’t go anywhere for the next ten minutes or so, everything will be fine. There’s no need to worry.” The attempted breeziness in Hera’s voice does not convince anyone, especially when her voicebox glitches far too often for the amount of words that she speaks.

Hilbert’s discontented groan speaks for itself before he disconnects from the intercom. Minkowski’s pursed-lipped expression expresses her irritation as well, and Lovelace guesses it isn’t caused by Hilbert’s continued existence.

“Hera, did he seriously not know about the issues with life support until you told him just now?” Minkowski asks. “You didn’t tell him when you told us? What if he had to step out of the lab to do something before you had the chance to tell him?”

“Yeah, what a tragedy that would be,” Lovelace mutters, and now it is her turn to receive a look of disapproval from Minkowski that silently conveys a message of _This is really not the time, Lovelace_.

“I was getting to it,” Hera insists through digitally gritted teeth. “In case you aren’t aware, it’s not exactly easy work to maintain the oxygen levels on the bridge and in the lab while fixing the life support system, while also making sure that no other systems go critical in the process. So _please_ , sirs, if you could get back to work and let me focus, I would _really_ appreciate it.”

The continued glitching of Hera’s speech does not do much to raise Lovelace’s confidence that she will get the job done. Minkowski’s sigh before she returns to her work at the nav computer betrays her own frustrations with the situation, but neither of them says anything on the matter. Instead, the only sound that fills the room is the quiet hum of machinery and the staccato taps of Minkowski’s typing. Lovelace tries one more time in vain to remove the stubborn ceiling panel without the help of a tool, but the only reward she gets for her efforts is a burst of soreness in her hands and a misapplication of force that sends her flying backwards from her position.

“All right,” says Minkowski. “I just have to give the data a few minutes to sync up and then everything on the nav computer should be sorted out for now. At least until the next time something--”

She breaks off abruptly, and soon Lovelace feels the tight grip of Minkowski’s hands against her arms to halt the trajectory of her momentum. They float there together for a moment, with Lovelace having a perfect upside-down view of Minkowski before she reorients herself. The unbroken eye contact between them is followed by the familiar routine of Minkowski clearing her throat and letting go of her when she realizes that she has maintained their contact for a suspiciously long period of time. That right there gives Lovelace all of the further evidence she needs to suspect a mutual attraction between them.

“Okay, that does it,” she declares. “I don’t care how awkward it is, we’re going to get to the bottom of this right now while neither of us can run away from it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Minkowski keeps her voice even, but the way that she averts her eyes from Lovelace tells a different story.

Lovelace scoffs. “Right. So I’ve been imagining how this isn’t the first time you’ve acted weird around me over the past couple of weeks.”

“If you think this because you told me that you’re…” Minkowski trails off there, still refusing to look Lovelace in the eye. For a woman who is supposed to at least pretend to be able to handle any problem that comes her way, Minkowski has proven herself to be a master at dancing around the real issues at hand, and it’s absolutely infuriating.

“That I’m _what_?” Lovelace prompts her. She cycles through all of the possible ways that the sentence could end before she realizes what Minkowski is talking about. Something about herself that she has told her within the past couple of weeks, something that Minkowski is afraid that she has shown a negative reaction toward… Well, there goes Lovelace’s assumption that she can casually mention her sexuality without issue. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Minkowski. Don’t tell me you’re afraid to say the word ‘lesbian.’”

“I’m not,” Minkowski insists. “And anyway, that’s not the problem. Or maybe it _is_ the problem, just not…” She hesitates, running a hand through the loose wisps of hair that stick out from her customary military-style bun. “Not in the way that you think.”

She finally raises her gaze to look at Lovelace. Her teeth worry at her bottom lip in a motion that is _entirely_ unfair to Lovelace and the hungry feeling in the pit of her stomach. The words “not in the way that you think” repeat themselves in Lovelace’s head as she tries to puzzle out their meaning. What assumption is Minkowski making about Lovelace’s thoughts? Is she implying that the confirmation that Lovelace is interested in women has caused some kind of awakening within her rather than repulsing her?

“I’m not an idiot, you know,” says Lovelace. “I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me. How you can’t take your eyes off me. I know I’m not imagining it.”

“I--” Whatever Minkowski intends to say dies away abruptly. She huffs out a brief sigh of frustration. “It’s complicated. There are a million reasons why I shouldn’t--why _we_ shouldn’t--”

“And what exactly is it that we shouldn’t do?” Lovelace asks. No matter how hard she has to push to pry the answer out of her, she is determined to hear whatever Minkowski has to say straight from her lips before she states any of her own feelings. “Tell me. I’m genuinely curious.”

She sees the movement of Minkowski’s throat as she swallows in a nervous motion. Minkowski does not shy away from her this time, however. Instead, she closes the scant amount of distance between them and tilts her head up toward Lovelace in what she cannot see as anything but an invitation.

Their lips meet in a clumsy kiss, clumsy not only in its uncertainty but also the inevitable complications that zero-gravity presents to even the simplest of kisses. When they break apart, Lovelace touches a hand to Minkowski’s cheek, stroking it downward until she can pass her thumb across her lower lip. The warm exhale of Minkowski’s breath brushes against her skin as their eyes meet in an unspoken moment of understanding between them.

Their second kiss lasts much longer than the fleeting touch of their lips, and they cling tightly to each other to prevent themselves from drifting too far apart. Minkowski yields easily to Lovelace’s advances, her lips parting to deepen the kiss as she wraps a hand around the nape of Lovelace’s neck in a tender hold. A warm feeling swells in the pit of her stomach at the passionate junction of their mouths, because oh _God_ has it been far too long since she has kissed someone like this. She grazes her teeth against Minkowski’s lower lip, not caring that she might be going too hard too fast. “Restraint” is a word that Lovelace does not know the definition of, and much to her relief Minkowski does not resist her actions. Instead, she utters a quiet sound against Lovelace’s mouth and grips her tighter in their embrace.

But just as Lovelace is entertaining fleeting thoughts of letting her mouth touch every inch of Minkowski’s body, wondering what it would feel like to slide her hands under her shirt and feel the warmth of her breasts beneath her palms, the spell is broken. Minkowski pulls away from her, her eyes wide with shock as she touches her fingers to her lips where Lovelace’s mouth had been moments before. The rush of kissing-induced joy--the single best feeling that Lovelace has experienced in months, maybe even years--fades away in an instant.

“I can’t.” Minkowski’s words come out as a quiet whisper. “I--oh, God. I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I--” She breaks off, scrubbing the heels of her hands against her face. “I’m sorry,” she repeats.

“Minkowski--” Lovelace begins, but Minkowski is already moving away from her, fleeing the scene even though she has no place to go. She has almost reached the door before the sound of Hera’s voice halts her in her path.

“Um, Commander.” Hera speaks with the unmistakable uncertainty of someone who knows that she should not be getting in the middle of what has occurred. “Not to, uh, interrupt anything, but the O2 levels in the corridors are still below breathable until I can get life support running again, so I _strongly_ suggest you remain on the bridge until I tell you it’s safe to leave.”

With no response to Hera, Minkowski moves away from the door to return to her previous position at the navigations computer. She keeps her eyes trained straight ahead as she goes, refusing to cast even the briefest glance in Lovelace’s direction when she passes by her. She does not say anything, but her body language speaks louder than her words ever could. The way that she sits hunched at the computer, her head resting in her hands and her shoulders taut with tension, spells out her distress and regret with no ambiguities. Lovelace should have expected that something like this would happen, to be honest. Mutual attraction and amazing kisses aside, nothing changes the fact that Minkowski is a married woman. She cannot expect Minkowski and her upstanding morals to disregard that detail for longer than the duration of two kisses, and so now their actions have trapped both of them in a web of complications.

The next ten minutes are among the longest in Lovelace’s life as she checks over her work on the repairs to the walls and ceiling to keep her distracted and _not_ looking at Minkowski’s miserable form. For all of Lovelace’s earlier thoughts about how being confined to the bridge with Minkowski may be the opportune moment that she has been waiting for, the oppressively uncomfortable silence that has fallen between them proves that all of this has been the _epitome_ of a bad idea. Maybe Lovelace would have been better off letting her newly realized attraction toward Minkowski pass her by before it caused any pain for anyone. Keep moving forward, stay unattached, don’t look back. That’s how it _should_ have gone, but now she has made the mistake of succumbing to her emotions and needlessly complicating the situation.

Finally, the chime of the PA system echoes throughout the bridge. “Attention, all crew,” Hera says. “I am pleased to announce that the life support systems are back online and in working order, and you are now free to move about the station. Thank you for your patience.”

Hera has barely finished speaking before Minkowski springs into action and bolts from the room, leaving the bridge door swinging open behind her in her wake. No expression of gratitude to Hera, no parting words or additional apologies to Lovelace--whatever crisis the kiss has thrown Minkowski into, it is undeniably _bad_.

“Captain?” Hera asks, now addressing Lovelace through the relative privacy of the bridge’s loudspeaker rather than the station-wide PA system. “Do I… Do I need to know anything about what just happened here?”

Lovelace exhales a slow breath. “No,” she replies. “It’s not your problem. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find that crowbar and get back to work.”

“Yes, sir,” says Hera in dutiful response.

The ajar door creaks with the movement of the station’s orbit. Its sound taunts Lovelace before she slams it shut behind her in her departure, venting all of her frustration into the single violent motion. She then leans against the closed door and takes another bracing breath to steady herself.

 _Keep going_ , she tells herself. _Don’t look back_.

But she _does_ look back, with the memory of Minkowski’s lips pressed against her own, and she wishes that she had never had the stupidity to care.


	5. Chapter 5

Over the next few days, Minkowski makes herself scarce around the station whenever interacting with Lovelace is concerned. Lovelace can’t say she is surprised, considering how eager she’d been to flee the scene after they had kissed, but Minkowski’s utterly childish approach to the situation still needles at her with pinpricks of mounting frustration. Even during the times that they are forced to see each other, when Minkowski is going over the day’s job assignments or checking on her progress, their conversations are limited to nothing but business matters hedged in the inevitable awkwardness that ensues when one of the participants clearly wants to be _anywhere_ but the present moment. The only conclusion that Lovelace can draw is that she has been an utter fool to think that kissing Minkowski would turn out to be anything other than a colossally bad idea.

The one positive in this situation is that she has more than enough repair work to keep her busy and distracted. She devotes herself one hundred percent to whatever job she has to do to fight off the station’s demise for one more day, taking overtime shifts for the past four days in a row because it’s not like she needs the extra rest. It’s an uphill battle to keep at least half of the station’s major functions working at any given time, and yet Lovelace suspects that most of the tasks that the crew attends to are assigned to give them a false sense of accomplishment. Why else would she end up repairing a light fixture in the cargo bay that hasn’t worked since the initial structural damage that the station had sustained after the star turned blue? Lovelace knows busywork when she sees it, and this is definitely it.

“Ow!” she exclaims when a broken piece of the light fixture slices through her finger as she works on replacing its outer panel. “Son of a--”

She breaks off with a sharp intake of breath to keep herself from crying out. Blood pools rapidly around the gash that cuts across her left index finger, staining her skin deep red. Her first instinct is to shake off the injury and return to work, but that course of action will lead to nothing but continued pain and a trail of congealed blood droplets following her wherever she goes until she stops bleeding. Judging by the sheer amount that she has bled in the past few seconds, she has a feeling that will not happen any time soon.

She closes her right hand around the injured finger to try to stem the flow of blood as she takes stock of the situation. There’s a first-aid kit in the supply closet one deck up, but if she is going that far, she might as well suck it up and go all the way to Hilbert’s lab to have him check out the wound. It’s better for her to get that over with now rather than to try to take care of it herself and risk making things worse.

Leaving her tools where they are and pushing through the throbbing pain that shoots through her finger, Lovelace heads up to the lab. According to the day’s rotation schedule, Hilbert is not scheduled to help with repairs until a few hours from now, and so she hopes that now is one of the times that Minkowski has given him access to his lab. Upon trying the door she discovers that the lab is unlocked, and so she struggles to open it without splattering blood across the handle.

“Captain Lovelace,” Hilbert greets her, looking up from where he is working with a couple of dubious-looking petri dishes. “This is a surprise.”

“Don’t get too excited. I’m just here to deal with workplace injury number who-the-hell-knows-anymore. Do you have a Band-Aid and some antiseptic that I can use?”

Hilbert makes a noise of affirmation as he rummages through one of the many drawers in the lab to find the items that she has requested. “Should I take a look at it?” he asks. “A wound not properly treated, potentially very dangerous in--”

“I’m fine,” Lovelace insists in automatic response. It has only been a few short months since she has been entirely at the mercy of Hilbert’s care, after all, and she is not eager to have him poking at her again. “It’s only a cut.”

Ignoring her protests, Hilbert unwraps her hand from around her injured finger to get a better look. He wipes the blood away from the site of the wound to inspect the full extent of its severity.

“Hmm. Not as bad at it looks. It will not need stitches,” he says. He releases her hand from his cold grip. “You’re lucky.”

She wordlessly takes the antiseptic and Band-Aid from him, and a hiss of pain escapes from between her teeth when she applies the antiseptic. As she carefully wraps the Band-Aid around her injured finger, she becomes acutely aware of how Hilbert’s eyes remain upon her in an unsettling gaze. Before she has the chance to ask him what the hell he’s looking at, his voice breaks through the silence that has fallen between them.

“Captain,” he says, “I cannot help but notice recent tension between you and Commander Minkowski, and--”

God, the situation must truly be bad if _Hilbert_ is commenting on it. “And what?” Lovelace snaps back. “What business of it is yours?”

“I just do not think it is wise for you to keep pushing people away,” replies Hilbert. “Where has that gotten you since you returned to the Hephaestus?”

“ _I’m_ not the one pushing anyone away.” Lovelace cannot believe that she is having this conversation with Hilbert of all people. “It’s not my problem that Minkowski refuses to take her head out of her ass for five seconds so that we can talk about things like actual adults instead of dancing around the elephant in the room, which seems to be the only approach to problem-solving that anyone has around here.”

“I was not aware that there were any elephants,” Hilbert says.

Lovelace groans in frustration. “Look, Doctor, I don’t have time for any fucked-up therapy sessions that you want to give me. You keep doing your work, and I’ll keep doing mine, and we’ll all live happily ever after. Got it?”

At first, Hilbert meets her words with nothing more than a steely silence. Then, with a sigh of resignation, he responds with “Be sure to keep the wound clean, and return to me if it is still bleeding heavily after a few hours.”

Lovelace does not deign to reply to this before leaving the lab. She is making her way back to the cargo bay when she collides with something--some _one_ \--as she rounds a corner too quickly. Considering the size of the station and how there are only two other physical crew members onboard besides herself, it’s an impressive feat that the universe has managed to align itself into her running into someone like this. Especially when, by pure process of elimination, the person happens to be Minkowski.

“Captain. Sorry about that,” Minkowski says in curt apology.

She hurries to continue moving past Lovelace, but Lovelace grabs hold of her forearm to stop her in her tracks. To her surprise, Minkowski does not pull away from her grip, although a frown darkens her expression at Lovelace’s touch.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Lovelace declares, diving straight into the heart of the matter with no further preamble.

Minkowski huffs out a frustrated breath. “I don’t think this is the right time for this.”

“Then when _is_ the right time?” Lovelace still does not let go of Minkowski’s arm. “Look, I understand if you’re feeling weird about what happened the other day. If you want to lecture me about how us kissing was a really bad idea, go nuts. I can take it. But I’m _sick_ of you shutting me out like this just because you seem to be allergic to taking initiative when it comes to solving any kind of interpersonal issues.”

This time, Minkowski _does_ pull away from her. “What do you want me to say?” she asks, throwing her hands up in frustration. “That I regret kissing you? That I haven’t come to feel _anything_ for you in the time that we’ve known each other? That we should forget about what happened and move on?”

“No,” replies Lovelace. “And it doesn’t sound like you want to say those things either.”

“I…” Minkowski breaks off, her words trailing into silence. She chews on her bottom lip nervously, and the frown lines on her forehead deepen. “I don’t know what this is. Whether I’m lonely, or confused, or… I don’t know, looking for _something_ to get me through this. But I’m _married_ , Lovelace. I can’t just forget about that, no matter what I’ve come to feel for you.”

Her words pierce through Lovelace like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, she now has further confirmation that Minkowski does indeed feel something for her, but on the other hand, she is still hiding behind hesitation and determination to remain on moral high ground. Lovelace _should_ feel awful that she wants Minkowski to disregard everything about the life waiting for her back on Earth and pursue these new feelings instead. With both of their lives having an expiration date unless a miracle happens, however, she has very few qualms about giving into selfishness.

“Yes. You’re married,” she says, and it’s hard for her to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “I _know_ that. But something tells me it’s not that simple.”

“I was happy with him,” Minkowski insists. She does not quite meet Lovelace’s eyes as she speaks. “We were happy. Dominik and I were _happy_.”

Hearing Minkowski refer to her husband by name makes everything about the situation all the more _real_ to Lovelace, forcing her to face the truth that he isn’t merely a nameless, faceless figure from Minkowski’s life prior to the Hephaestus mission. And yet something in Minkowski’s words makes her feelings sound forced, like she is trying to convince herself as much as she is Lovelace. The increasingly insistent repetitions, the use of the past tense--that is not the sound of a woman who is truly happy.

“‘Were’?” Lovelace echoes her, raising her eyebrows.

“We _are_ happy.” The wavering pause around the last word further reveals Minkowski’s uncertainty. “But sometimes I think about everything I left behind on Earth, and it’s--it’s like it was part of a different life. After everything that has happened up here, I think that even if we _do_ manage to get back home, nothing will be the same for any of us anymore. And you _understand_ that, probably better than anyone on Earth ever could. And that might be some of the reason why…”

“Why there’s this thing between us now,” Lovelace finishes for her.

Minkowski nods. “And I feel like I _shouldn’t_ want it. Even if I _wasn’t_ married, there are half a dozen other reasons why it shouldn’t happen. Pryce and Carter number two sixty-seven--”

“Oh, for the love of God,” Lovelace groans, because of _course_ Minkowski would bring up a deep space survival tip relevant to their situation. Lovelace has read the survival and protocol manual cover-to-cover like any good mission commander should, but she prefers to think of the tips as casual guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules.

“Pryce and Carter two sixty-seven,” Minkowski presses on, ignoring Lovelace’s interruption. “Exercise caution when considering romantic entanglements with fellow crew members. While camaraderie among crew members is encouraged, any deeper relationships could cause unnecessary complications that may have adverse effects on the mission. Dating in deep space is not advisable in the majority of situations.”

“The _majority_ of situations,” Lovelace points out. “Tell me, is there anything in Pryce and Carter that has prepared you for what to do when the red dwarf you’re orbiting turns blue, the station you’re on is falling apart beyond repair, and no one is responding to any distress calls? I think we’re far beyond any situation that Pryce and Carter applies to.”

“That’s not the point,” says Minkowski in exasperation. “The point is, every part of me has been telling me that we shouldn’t do this, and it’s easier for me to listen to that voice when I’m not around you. Because when I _am_ around you, whenever I even _think_ about you, I want to…”

Lovelace’s response of “Want to what?” has barely left her mouth before Minkowski closes the distance between them and kisses her. It's more than the simple touch of their lips that their first kiss had been. It’s a kiss that leaves them clinging together as they drift lazily toward the wall, and Minkowski braces one hand against its surface to balance herself. Lovelace parts her lips to allow Minkowski’s tongue to enter her mouth as she tightens her hold on her. As much as she longs to take control of the kiss, to flip their positions so that she is the one pressing Minkowski against the wall, she does not allow herself to do so. Minkowski is the commander of the station, after all, and in this moment Lovelace is happy to let her take command.

“Jesus,” she breathes after they have withdrawn from each other. “I didn’t think you had that in you.”

“Neither did I, to be honest.” Minkowski gives a nervous little laugh. “It’s… well. Excluding that other kiss we had on the bridge, it’s been a long time since I’ve kissed someone like that.”

“You’d better not run away this time,” says Lovelace. “Because I’m not interested in half-assing things here. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t run away,” Minkowski assures her.

With only the slightest trace of hesitation, she takes one of Lovelace’s hands in her own. As she entwines their fingers together and squeezes gently, she puts pressure on Lovelace’s injured finger. Lovelace lets out a soft “ow” of pain that makes Minkowski immediately loosen her hold.

“It’s all right,” Lovelace says before Minkowski can open her mouth to apologize. “I sliced my finger open while I was working in the cargo bay. I was coming back from getting it checked out in Hilbert’s lab when I ran into you.”

“Oh.” Minkowski lets go of Lovelace’s hand completely. “I’m sorry. I should let you get back to work. But…” She lingers on that word, as if she is unsure whether she wants to continue with the thought. “I’m off rotation at 1900 hours tonight if you’d like to spend some time together then, maybe? It’d be a nice break from all the overtime you’ve been putting in.”

“Yeah,” replies Lovelace. “That would be great.”

“Good.” Minkowski is all business with the decisive nod that she gives along with her response. “We’ll talk later, then.”

She brushes her hand against Lovelace’s one last time, and a rare smile crosses her lips before she takes her leave. Lovelace watches her go, and with the relief that fills her at the dissipation of tension between them, she suspects that the time before she sees her again will not pass quickly enough.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few hours, Lovelace manages to accomplish a surprising number of things considering how she must maintain a limited amount of mobility in her injured figure lest she start screaming in pain. She finishes repairing and reinstalling the light fixture in the cargo bay, and then she tackles some calibrations to the cooling system in engineering followed by patching up some loose wiring in the corridors near the greenhouse. After that, it’s only a matter of attending to a few standard maintenance chores before she is free until tomorrow starts the whole damn process over again.

She has just enough time to grab a quick bite to eat, run three miles on the treadmill, and take a shower before she meets Minkowski at their scheduled time. She ends up finding her in the mess hall, heating up some water for tea in the electric kettle. During their time together on the Hephaestus, Lovelace has become familiar with Minkowski’s routine when it comes to caffeinated drinks: two cups of coffee throughout the course of the morning and a cup of tea in the evening. It’s a stark contrast to Lovelace’s own habit of consuming caffeine indiscriminately throughout the day in the hope that it will keep her awake for long enough to stave off her nightmares.

“Hey,” Minkowski says upon noticing her presence. “Would you like some tea?

“Yeah, sure.” Not that it can really be called tea when it’s a seaweed-infused substitute, but the same thing can be said about the majority of the food and drink on the station.

Minkowski pours a second mug and carries them both over to Lovelace. She sticks a straw into Lovelace’s mug before passing it to her. A hesitant silence falls between them as they wait for the other to say something, but it does not last long before Minkowski speaks.

“So,” she says, “how did the rest of your repairs go today?”

Lovelace sighs in exasperation. “Can this be one time that we can have a conversation like normal people who aren’t desperately trying to keep a sinking ship afloat?”

“I suppose so.” Minkowski drinks from her mug and grimaces at the only vaguely tea-like taste. “God. What I would give to have a real cup of tea right now. One that I don’t have to drink through a straw.”

“Yeah, I know how that is,” Lovelace agrees. She takes a drink of her own. It’s not bad, all things considered. “I barely even remember what real coffee tastes like anymore. It’s a real tragedy.”

“I wish we hadn’t gone through the real coffee and tea so quickly after we came up here,” says Minkowski. “I suppose it was inevitable with Eiffel on board. He had no self-control whatsoever. He accused me of _oppressing_ him when I suggested that we start strictly rationing all caffeinated beverages after we’d been on the station for a couple of months.”

There’s a note of pain in Minkowski’s voice when she refers to Eiffel in the past tense. Even though the smallest sliver of hope lingers that Eiffel may still be alive somewhere in the vast expanse of deep space, over the past few months Minkowski has probably begun making her peace with the extremely likely possibility that he will never return, that he died alone in the shuttle amidst the endless void of space. It's always one of the hardest transitions to make, going from thinking how people _are_ to how they _were_ , and Lovelace is all too familiar with the pain of making that distinction.

“But actually,” Minkowski continues, pressing onward through the inevitable pall that shadows the conversation at the mention of Eiffel’s name, “the thing that I’d _really_ give anything for is a big bowl of ice cream. Not astronaut ice cream, not Hilbert’s closest approximation to ice cream, _real_ ice cream. And even if I settled for the Hilbert approximation, I don’t think he’d be kind enough to make it for me after what happened last time I asked him.”

Lovelace raises her eyebrows. “There was an incident with you and Hilbert and ice cream?”

“Oh, it’s a long story.” The vague, noncommittal tone in her voice indicates that Minkowski would rather not go into the details. Unfortunately for her, Lovelace refuses to let any potentially interesting story go untold. “I was drunk and things… _escalated_.”

Lovelace nearly spits out the sip of tea that she has just taken. “Oh my God. _You_ were drunk?” The thought of by-the-book, stick-in-the-mud Minkowski getting drunk on the station does not mesh well with the impression that she has formed of her.

“Not by choice,” Minkowski insists. She sighs deeply and takes a drink from her mug to prepare herself for the story that she will inevitably have to tell. “It was a while ago, before everything started to go wrong after Christmas. I was organizing the quarterly talent show--shut up, don’t laugh,” she adds at Lovelace’s snort of laughter. “Eiffel and Hilbert were both trying to get out of participating, and Hilbert thought it would be a good idea for his ‘talent’ to be a drink with some kind of sedative in it to knock me out. Only it, uh… didn’t work as intended and got me drunk instead. I don’t remember most of the details after that, but apparently I became very passionate about staging a production of _Pirates of Penzance_ , demanded that Hilbert make me some ice cream, and set off a cannon that blew a hole in the side of the storeroom.”

“Oh my _God_. You’ve got to be joking.” Lovelace has had her own share of drunken adventures over the years, but nothing comes close to setting off a goddamn _cannon_. She doesn’t even question where the cannon had come from. There’s probably no valid explanation anyway.

“Unfortunately, I’m dead serious.” Minkowski rolls up one of the sleeves of her shirt to reveal the faded mark of a burn scar. “That was from the cannon explosion. Not exactly the kind of injury I expected to get on a deep space mission.”

“At least you had an opportunity to get drunk here,” Lovelace points out. “I think when all of us get home we’re going to need a nice stiff drink. Or several.”

“I could probably chug down an entire bottle of wine in one sitting,” says Minkowski with a longing sigh. “Because I’d deserve it, damn it.”

Lovelace makes a noise of agreement and takes a drink from her mug. “Hmm. You’d think good-quality food and drink is the only thing that either of us misses from Earth.”

She regrets the words from the moment they leave her mouth. How quickly she has forgotten the looming issue that is Minkowski’s husband back on Earth, especially when they have so recently discussed how Minkowski has been struggling with conflicted feelings on that front for months now. Even indirectly implying that Minkowski does not miss her husband is incredibly unfair of her, but if Minkowski takes any offense to her words, she does not show it in her response.

“Of course there are other things too,” she replies. She runs her hand up and down the side of her mug in an absent motion. “This is going to sound silly, considering where we are right now, but one thing I miss is looking up at the sky and seeing the stars and the moon from Earth. And don’t get me wrong, there was definitely something truly magical about the first time I did a spacewalk and saw Wolf 359 _right there_ in front of me. But something about the view from Earth, it’s… I don’t know. Comforting, I guess.”

She pauses to take a drink. Lovelace hates how her eyes are drawn to her mouth closing around the straw and the curve of her fingers around the side of her mug. Here Minkowski is, actually opening up to her a little, and all she can do is stare at her in a moment of distraction.

“I remember one summer when I was young--maybe six or seven years old, it was when I was living in Poland--my parents brought me on a camping trip for a few days in the countryside,” Minkowski continues on. “My father woke me up in the middle of the night and made me stargaze with him. At first I didn’t see what the big deal was. I saw the stars all the time at home and in the books and star charts that I’d borrow from his study. But then I saw the sheer _amount_ of stars you could see on a clear night in the countryside, and it… It was so mesmerizing. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the feeling of first realizing that there’s so much out there in the universe, and I’m only a small piece of it. And I remember this vividly, I remember looking up at my father and asking him if I’d ever get to go to space. And he smiled and tapped me on the nose and promised me that someday I would.”

It’s hard for Lovelace to imagine Minkowski as a child, gazing up in wonderment at the sky above her and setting her sights on the dream that would carry her through to adulthood. Lovelace’s own hopes and dreams have shifted so much during her lifetime that she has found herself always needing to reevaluate her personal goals until they boil down to nothing more to staying alive and finding a way home. It must be nice for Minkowski to be living out her childhood dream of seeing outer space, but now Lovelace understands more than ever the pressure she puts on herself to succeed.

“And now here you are,” says Lovelace. “It’s probably not like what you imagined when you were a kid at all.”

“No, it’s… Well, I don’t suppose life on the Hephaestus matches up with _anyone’s_ expectations from before the mission began. But what about you?” Minkowski asks, swiftly turning the conversation away from the grim reality of how a deep space survey could end up going so utterly _wrong_ for both of them. “Did you dream of going to space when you were a kid?”

“Sure, what kid doesn’t think that space is super cool at some point in their life? But if you’re talking about a lifelong dream? No, not really.” Lovelace struggles to think back to her childhood years. Those memories feel like they belong to a different person, someone who would have never expected her life to turn out how it did. “I guess the thing that I really wanted to do when I was a kid was to beat up bad guys. Or play basketball. Or maybe beat up bad guys _while_ playing basketball. But then…” She gives a humorless laugh. “Then I grew up and realized that sometimes it’s not always as clear who the bad guys are as you want it to be.”

“Yeah. I think everything that has happened to us here is proof of that.”

Silence falls between them. Lovelace reaches across the table and brushes her fingers against Minkowski’s hand in a hesitant motion. Minkowski shifts her hand to interlace their fingers, although not before checking to ensure that this is not Lovelace’s injured hand. Thankfully, the cut has given Lovelace very few problems beyond the occasional dull ache since she has sustained it. Last time she checked it had stopped bleeding, which has saved her from another trip to Hilbert’s lab. In most other circumstances Lovelace would resent someone treating her so delicately like this, but when Minkowski shows wordless concern for her it’s strangely… _endearing_.

“So,” Minkowski begins, her voice breaking through the silence. She passes her thumb across the knuckle of Lovelace’s own thumb in an absent motion. “What now?”

“More heartwarming stories of our childhood dreams? More talk about the really good food that we miss from Earth that’s just going to make me hungry? I don’t know.” Lovelace lifts her mug with her free hand to take a drink. “I’ve always been more in favor of _doing_ instead of sitting around and talking.”

Minkowski murmurs in agreement. “I… Well, I suppose this is as good a time as any to bring this up. From what I can tell, you seem to be very secure in your sexuality, and I definitely admire that. But for me, this is the first time that I’ve felt, well, _anything_ like this for another woman. That I know of, at least. There may have been other times that I just didn’t realize, and, well. Anyway.” She clears her throat, realizing that she has veered away from the real issue. “Between that and various other circumstances…” She breaks off here, and Lovelace assumes that by “circumstances” she means either her husband back on Earth, the possibility of their deaths within the next few months, or both. “I might need to take things a little slowly between us, if that’s okay with you.”

“We’re not exactly made of time around here,” Lovelace points out.

“I know. But you said it yourself earlier today. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. We’ve already had so many things go wrong for us over the past few months, and I don’t want to mess this up too.”

“Neither do I,” says Lovelace. Going slowly is something that has never quite agreed with her--she prefers to take an “all-or-nothing” approach to most things in her life--but for the sake of Minkowski and their fledgling relationship, she is willing to compromise. “But we _did_ start using tongue pretty quickly the last two times that we kissed. That’s taking things a little faster than slowly.”

Minkowski scowls at her teasing words. “You are _impossible_ sometimes, you know that?”

“Relax, I’m kidding.” Lovelace tightens the grip of their intertwined fingers. “And I understand what you’re getting at. We’ll take things as slow as you need.”

“Good. That’s--that’s good. I’m glad you understand.” The breath that Minkowski lets out almost sounds like a sigh of relief. When she drinks from her mug, the empty sound of her straw sucking up a minimal amount of liquid indicates that she is already approaching the bottom of her cup of tea. Setting the mug aside, she continues with, “But just so you know, I’m not opposed to everything that we’ve done so far. And I definitely wouldn’t mind doing it again. Kissing you, that is.”

Lovelace laughs. “Good to know.”

Their conversation continues onward until Minkowski finally declares that she should retire to her quarters for the night. A moment of hesitation passes between them when they rise from the table and approach each other to say goodnight. No words need to be spoken to each other, however, and at the junction of their lips and the tight cling of their bodies together, Lovelace feels like that for the first time in a long while, something on this station may actually be going _right._


	6. Chapter 6

Nights on the station are always difficult for Lovelace, even when the distinction of “night” is largely meaningless in a place that has no proper sunrise and sunset to dictate the daily cycles. If she is lucky, she can find extra work to keep her occupied well into the nighttime hours, leaving her with only a few hours to try to get some sleep before she gives up and lets insomnia and nightmares win. If she is unlucky, she finds herself with no more repairs and maintenance to take care of by the end of the evening rotation, which means several hours of being alone in her quarters while Minkowski and Hilbert are presumably asleep and Hera is hard at work keeping everything on the station running in the absence of a waking crew. The loneliness is what plagues her the most. _Alone_ is what makes the whispering voices in her head grow louder, reminding her of the ghosts that still haunt her, the hell that she has been forced to repeat since her return to the Hephaestus, and the ever-looming shadow of death that grows closer with every distress call that goes unanswered.

Of course, Lovelace is not without ways of fighting these thoughts. She has done countless late-night workouts, using the adrenaline of exercise to block out everything negative on her mind, and she has also been slowly making her way through every piece of reading material on the station. For the past few nights, Minkowski’s company in the late hours of the evening has helped her as well, but unfortunately Minkowski’s determination to adhere to a strict sleep schedule when she isn’t working overtime hours that veer into all-nighters still leaves Lovelace with several hours that she needs to fill until the day starts over again.

When the station’s clocks read two in the morning, Lovelace has settled into her quarters with the latest title from the Hephaestus’s shitty book selection and the last cold dregs of a cup of tea from a couple of hours ago. She has barely gotten through a couple of pages when she hears a quiet knock on the door. The unexpected sound throws her nighttime-enhanced paranoia into high alert, and she wishes that all non-improvised weaponry wasn’t locked up in the station’s armory. Can she knock someone out with a book or a mug, she wonders? But no, there should be no need for that. No matter how unsafe she feels on the Hephaestus at any given moment, she must not immediately jump to the conclusion that whoever--or _what_ ever--stands on the other side of the door has any intention to harm her.

“Who is it?” she asks, her heart pounding in her chest.

“It’s me,” comes Minkowski’s voice from the other side of the door.

Letting out the breath that she hasn’t realized she was holding until now, Lovelace crosses the room to let Minkowski in. She opens the door to reveal a slightly less put-together version of Minkowski than what she is accustomed to seeing. Instead of her normal uniform, she wears a T-shirt and sweatpants, and her hair hangs loose rather than neatly pulled back. Lovelace has never seen her with her hair down like this. She has seen it in various states of disarray, depending on the severity of whatever the daily disaster is, but never completely let down with the lack of gravity causing it to float around her head in a dark corona.

“It’s kind of late for you to come knocking,” Lovelace says to her. “What emergency do we have to take care of now?”

“No, no emergencies this time. Not yet, at least,” she adds with an inevitable note of grimness in her voice. “I, uh, I couldn’t sleep. And I figured that you’re probably still up, so… here I am.”

“You know me too well.” Lovelace moves aside so that Minkowski can enter her quarters. “Welcome to insomnia hell. We have terrible literature and inescapable paranoia and anxiety.”

Minkowski picks up the book that Lovelace has been reading and leafs through it. “The ‘terrible literature,’ I assume?” she asks. “Is this--oh my God. A romance novel, _really_ , Lovelace?”

“Hey, in my defense,” says Lovelace--not that she needs to defend herself to Minkowski over something like this, especially when she has already admitted to the questionable quality of her choice of reading material. “I’ve already read all the good books on the station, and if the technical manuals aren’t enough to put me to sleep, I figured it’s time to try something new even if it means scraping the bottom of the barrel. It’s almost entertaining in a ‘dear Lord, this is bad’ way.”

At Minkowski’s raised eyebrows, she snatches the book back and secures it somewhere safe so it does not float aimlessly throughout the room over the course of the night. The last thing she needs is a book drifting into her face while she is trying to have a private moment with Minkowski.

“So what’s got you unable to sleep tonight?” Lovelace asks her. “Usually you’re the model of getting a good night’s sleep when the situation allows for it.”

“Oh, just this and that,” Minkowski replies. She runs a hand through her hair in an attempt to smooth down the wayward strands. “It’s just… It’s been over a month now since I told the rest of you about the cracks in the station. Hera estimated it would be between sixty and one hundred and twenty days before we hit the point that we won’t be able to barely hang on to station functionality anymore. And we’re already a quarter of the way through the most optimistic outlook for the station’s lifespan, and sometimes I think Hera has a more accurate sense of how much time we have left but doesn’t want to say it, and…” Her words trail off into a sigh. “It’s hard to fall asleep with all of that on your mind.”

Lovelace makes a noise of understanding. “I’ve always been impressed that you’re able to get any sleep at all, to be honest.”

“And then all of that got me thinking,” Minkowski continues. “About what I said to you the other day, that we should take things slowly for now. And maybe this is just my lack of sleep talking, but I’m starting to think that maybe that’s not the best--” She reaches out to touch Lovelace’s arm, slowly moving her hand upward across her bare skin. “--idea.”

Lovelace tries to construe her words as something that doesn’t resemble the very un-Minkowski-like action of a two A.M. booty call. It’s probably something more like Minkowski’s need for human contact to combat the loneliness that comes with being awake in the middle of night with nothing but a dying space station and the dark void of space surrounding her. Lovelace understands that feeling all too well, and she is certainly not going to argue against Minkowski’s suggestion.

She touches Minkowski’s hand, tracing the bumps of her knuckles to further encourage her. “What do you have in mind?” she asks.

“I’m not sure,” Minkowski admits. She wets her lips, probably more out of nervousness than an act of seduction. “I was thinking maybe we’d just… see where things take us?”

“We can do that.” Lovelace leans in to press a brief kiss to the corner of Minkowski’s mouth. “Nothing like a lack of sleep to help set the mood.”

Their lips meet again in a proper kiss, and Minkowski wraps an arm around Lovelace to prevent them from drifting apart from each other. In the days that have passed since they initiated the tentative start to their relationship, they have quickly mastered the best methods for kissing when they have no solid ground to stand on. Any further intimacy between them, however, exists purely as a hypothetical concept thus far. The logistics of sex in zero gravity are much more complicated in practice than they are inside Lovelace’s head, and it brings into question how difficult anything more complex than kissing will be for them.

As they drift toward the wall, Lovelace pulls away from Minkowski to regain her bearings and figure out the best positioning to avoid any zero-gravity mishaps. Using a wall for leverage presents a certain advantage, and at the very least it provides a solid object to stop the momentum of any movement that would otherwise send them floating in the wrong direction. Besides, Minkowski has already proved herself to be unafraid of kissing her against a wall, judging by the kiss they had shared in the corridor several days earlier.

She grabs hold of Minkowski’s hand and guides them toward the only empty wall of the room that does not contain her tethered sleeping bag, a window, a door, or a storage locker. They do not get far into resuming their kiss before some of Minkowski’s loose strands of hair make their way into Lovelace’s mouth.

“Okay, you’ve got to do _something_ about your hair,” Lovelace declares, unsticking the strands from her lips. She keeps her own hair short enough to not be too much of a hindrance to her in zero gravity, and so the concept of always having to keep hair pulled back to avoid any incidents is mostly foreign to her.

“Right. Definitely a good idea.”

Minkowski takes a hair elastic from around her wrist and twists her hair into a messy bun. One stray tendril of hair hangs free even after the rest has been pulled back, and Lovelace reaches out to tuck the unruly strand behind her ear. Her hand lingers against Minkowski’s cheek in a moment of held breath between them before their lips meet again to continue their kiss.

It doesn’t take long before Lovelace’s mouth travels downward, tracing a path down the line of Minkowski’s throat. The sigh of contentment that Minkowski gives soon turns into a giggle at the pressure that Lovelace applies to suck gently on a stretch of skin above the neckline of her shirt.

“I knew it.” Lovelace moves her lips away from her for long enough to curl them into a triumphant smirk. “You’re ticklish.”

“I am _not_ ,” Minkowski insists. “And if you tell anyone I am--”

Lovelace laughs, her lips brushing against Minkowski’s skin as she does so. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She presses another suckling kiss to the spot where her lips have previously touched before lifting her head. By the morning, Minkowski will surely have a mark there, and for her sake Lovelace hopes that neither Hera nor Hilbert are in the habit of asking about hickeys. In this moment, however, Minkowski shows no concern about them leaving marks on each other. Instead, she looks up at her with bright hunger in her eyes as Lovelace braces one hand against the wall to steady herself. She runs a hand down the front of Lovelace’s shirt, stopping at a clothed breast. She closes her touch around it in a tentative motion that leaves Lovelace’s breath trapped between lips and teeth as a spark rises deep inside her. A dozen scenarios about what she wants to happen next rush through her mind, but she does not want to jump into anything before further consulting Minkowski on how far she is comfortable going tonight.

“How do you feel about our clothes coming off?” she asks.

Minkowski moves her hand away from Lovelace’s breast, as if she has suddenly become aware of what she is doing. “As long as we don’t get too cold,” she replies, and Lovelace has to laugh at the overly pragmatic response. “Hera still hasn’t managed to sort out the occasional temperature fluctuations in the crew quarters. We’ll have to hope that the air temperature doesn’t suddenly drop ten degrees while we’re naked.” She stumbles slightly over the word “naked,” betraying her hesitation.

“Listen, if you think this is too much--” Lovelace begins.

“No.” The response leaves Minkowski’s mouth in an emphatic sound. “It’s definitely not too much. It’s just what I said the other day, about how I’ve never done any of this with another woman before. So some parts of it might be… well, not exactly _new_ territory, but _different_ territory.”

“And I imagine this will be the first time either of us has had sex in zero gravity,” says Lovelace. “It’ll be a learning experience for everyone.” Not to mention that it has been over five years since Lovelace has last gotten laid, and although she considers sex to be like riding a bicycle in that you never really forget how to do it, the lack of gravity definitely throws a complicated wrench into the situation.

“Okay.” Minkowski takes a bracing breath. “We’re both smart, resourceful women. We can figure this out. Pryce and Carter three sixty-nine: In the event that you find yourself engaging in sexual intercourse in deep space, exercise extreme caution. Zero-gravity conditions can quickly turn a pleasurable encounter into a dangerous one. In particular, be mindful of the effects that a lack of gravity can have on any thrusting movements or the exchange of fluids--”

Lovelace holds up a hand to stop her. “Yeah, as enlightening as it is to hear you spout off Pryce and Carter’s Deep Space Cosmo Sex Tips, I think we can do this without their help. Unless you get off to reciting a survival and protocol manual, in which case I _am_ going to have to make fun of you just a little bit.”

Minkowski laughs, and the pure, unrestrained sound of her laughter breaks some of the anticipatory tension between them. “Right. No Pryce and Carter in the bedroom. Got it.”

Lovelace pulls her shirt over her head in an invitation for Minkowski to continue her earlier actions. Her initiative sends them into a flurry of clothing removal, and now it’s Lovelace’s turn to laugh when her bra collides with Minkowski’s face. Minkowski tosses it aside in an impatient motion before steadying her grip against the wall with one hand. The movement gives Lovelace a perfect view of her recently exposed breasts, but she barely has time to admire them before Minkowski pulls her into another kiss.

She plunges her tongue deeper in Minkowski’s mouth as Minkowski cups a hand around one of her breasts once again. A quiet moan of satisfaction leaves her at the brush of Minkowski’s thumb against her nipple, and the touch sends a burst of pleasure through her body that goes straight to her groin. She maneuvers her knee to wedge between Minkowski’s legs, careful not to dislodge her from the grip she has on the wall. At the added point of friction between them, Minkowski lets out of breathy noise and squeezes her hand against Lovelace’s breast in a gentle yet firm motion.

“Do you have any ideas about how this is going to work?” Minkowski asks after they have broken their kiss. Lovelace’s thigh remains between her legs, warm between the fabric of the sweatpants that Minkowski has not removed yet.

“Improvisation. Maybe a bit a trial and error.” Although the zero-gravity conditions allow for a bit more creativity in positioning, Lovelace suspects that physics will counteract the majority of positions that she is used to. “Just follow my lead.”

“Okay. I trust you.”

Lovelace adjusts her hold on the wall to reposition herself so that she can dip her head down toward Minkowski’s breasts. She trails kisses across her skin before settling her mouth around one of her breasts, flicking her tongue across her nipple. The motion earns her a quiet moan of “Oh, _God_ ” from Minkowski that further encourages her. Having to keep one hand holding onto the wall so that she does not float away limits Lovelace’s range of motion more than she likes, but she eventually settles into a comfortable position that allows her to keep her mouth on Minkowski’s breasts as she lets her free hand skim down her stomach to tease against the waistband of her pants.

“If my…” Minkowski’s words taper off into a satisfied breath at the continued movement of Lovelace’s mouth. “If my pants are coming off, then so are yours.”

Lovelace takes her lips away from her long enough to speak. “I think we can arrange that.”

It doesn’t take long before they have both helped each other tug off their pants and underwear, and soon they both float naked in front of each other with nothing left hidden between them. Minkowski reaches out in a hesitant motion to pull Lovelace closer to her, but she barely manages to touch one hand to the small of her back before her grip against the wall slips and sends her drifting off to the right.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says. She grapples behind her to grasp the nearest handhold once again. “I guess we’re going to have to instate an ‘at least one hand on the wall at all times’ rule.”

Lovelace checks her own grip on the wall before running her free hand across newly revealed skin until it dips down between Minkowski’s legs. A breath hitches in Minkowski’s throat as she parts her legs so that the teasing touch of Lovelace’s fingers against her inner thigh can delve deeper.

“You good?” Lovelace asks.

Minkowski nods. “Yeah. Just go slow. I don’t want to start drifting from the wall again.”

Lovelace keeps things simple for now, circling two fingers around her clit in a steady motion. Minkowski closes her eyes, her breaths quickening at the touch and her hips grinding against Lovelace’s hand in small movements that will not cause too much disruption to the delicate positional balance between them. Minkowski is much more vocally responsive to her advances than she expects, and Lovelace revels in each sound that she can draw out from between her lips.

When she takes her hand away from her, Minkowski gives a soft whine of impatience. Lovelace placates her with brief kisses pressed against her skin before letting go of the wall to drift downward. It takes a little bit of adjustment for her to find a comfortable position, but soon she is able to have one hand secured to the wall while the other wraps around one of Minkowski’s thighs to hold her steady and spread her legs open wider.

“You think you can hold this position?” Lovelace asks her.

“Yeah.” Minkowski’s response remains breathless even when Lovelace barely touches her beyond the grip on her leg. “All those workouts I’ve been doing have to be good for _something_ , right?”

Lovelace murmurs in agreement. She brushes her lips across Minkowski’s inner thigh, giving her a teasing kiss before she brings her mouth further inward. When she runs her tongue along the already wet and aroused skin of her folds, Minkowski’s surprised and satisfied moan is all that she needs to hear. The repeated cries of “Oh my God” between heavy breaths encourages Lovelace even further as she works her mouth against her in decisive movements. Here in this moment, tasting Minkowski on her tongue and breathing in her scent, she can almost forget about her fears and anxieties that have led her to having sleep-deprivation fueled sex rather than a good night’s sleep. Right now, there is no decaying space station, no lack of a way home, and no sense of impending doom. There is only her and Minkowski and the unlikely bond that has developed between them that has brought them to this night.

Eventually, the tension that has been building up inside Minkowski breaks all at once, and she comes with a final gasping breath. Lovelace slows the motion of her mouth, letting her ride through the aftershocks before she pulls away from her. She looks up to see the aftermath of Minkowski’s pleasure--her face flushed, her lips parted, her breaths ragged--and feels a surge of pride that she has brought her to such a state.

“So, how was that?” she asks.

“It was… _wow_.” Minkowski takes a breath to steady herself. “I never realized how much I needed that until now.”

Lovelace lets go of the wall so that she can float freely once more. “If only sex could solve all of the problems we’ve been having on this station.”

“Unless you plan on sweet-talking the stress fractures into fixing themselves.” There’s a dark note of humor in Minkowski’s response that reminds both of them that no matter how much they try, some of their problems will always remind unfixable. She clears her throat upon realizing that she has brought the conversation to a grim place. “Anyway. What do we do now? Zero-gravity cuddling?”

Lovelace laughs. Five months ago, she would have never expected Minkowski to propose something like this, and yet here they are. “I’m not sure how well that will work, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”

She pushes aside a couple of clothing items that float toward them before pulling Minkowski closer to her. The warmth of Minkowski’s body heat pressed up against her makes her long to feel her fingers and mouth across every inch of her skin. For now, though, Lovelace is willing to save any reciprocation until later. She’s just as happy giving as she is receiving, and she is sure that there will be an opportunity for Minkowski to return the favor in whatever limited future remains for them on the station.

“So,” says Minkowski. One of her fingers traces an absent path across Lovelace’s skin, outlining the curves of her breasts. “I guess it goes without saying that no one else in the crew should know that this happened. I mean, not that it wasn’t wonderful-- _absolutely_ wonderful. I just don’t want to set a precedent for unprofessionalism.”

“Yeah, this definitely stays between us,” Lovelace agrees. “Can’t have anyone else knowing about how the Commander _really_ enjoys being eaten out.”

Minkowski lightly swats Lovelace’s arm in a teasingly indignant motion. The brief touch is nearly enough to send Lovelace floating away from her. As she adjusts her position to prevent them from drifting apart, a new and unexpected voice echoes throughout the room.

“Um, not to make things weird,” says Hera. “But since I’m aware of everything that happens on the station, technically it’s only Dr. Hilbert who doesn’t know about what you two just did.”

Lovelace suddenly feels incredibly exposed at the entwined forms of her and Minkowski’s naked bodies. Minkowski gives a little groan of despair and buries her rapidly reddening face into Lovelace’s shoulder.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Hera,” says Lovelace. “Would it kill you to give us a little privacy?”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Hera replies, “I’ve been trying _really_ hard to not pay attention to what’s been going on in your quarters ever since you, uh…” She stops there, sounding almost as embarrassed as Lovelace and Minkowski feel. “Well, for a while now.”

“Thank you, Hera.” Minkowski speaks with air of forced dignity in her voice. “Now if you could continue to leave us alone for the rest of the night unless there’s an emergency, that would be very much appreciated.”

“Yes, Commander. Of course.”

A hesitant silence falls across the room as both Lovelace and Minkowski wait to hear if she has anything else to say. With the lack of any visual confirmation that Hera is indeed ignoring them to the best of her ability, they will have to take her word for it.

“Well,” Lovelace says. “That was sufficiently awkward.”

Minkowski murmurs in agreement. “If only there were a way to keep Hera’s eyes out of here without disabling her entire optics system.”

She withdraws herself from Lovelace’s arms, and for a strange moment Lovelace wonders if she’s _actually_ going to investigate how to keep Hera selectively unaware of certain rooms on her system’s scans. Instead, she sorts through the items of clothing that float lazily in the middle of the room to find the items that belong to her.

“Should I send any clothes your way?” Minkowski asks as she re-dresses herself.

“Just my shirt and underwear is fine,” replies Lovelace.

Minkowski tosses the items of clothing toward her, and Lovelace reaches out to catch them in their slow trajectory. It’s not until she has pulled her shirt over her head that everything clicks in her mind that this may be the moment that Minkowski chooses to take her leave.

“So I guess you’re headed back to your quarters now?” she asks her.

Minkowski murmurs in affirmation. “This has been… Well, it’s been a better distraction than I could have ever hoped for. But I _do_ think I should try to get some sleep sooner rather than later. And so should you.”

Her last words are pointed, but not necessarily in a “I know your sleep schedule is non-existent and we _really_ need to do something about that” way. There’s something more _caring_ about what Minkowski says, as if she genuinely wants Lovelace to get a good night’s rest for reasons beyond the guidelines and protocol that strongly suggest getting a solid eight hours of sleep every night. If only things were that easy for Lovelace, that she could close her eyes and drift off with no problems, but she does not want to burden Minkowski with the admission of just how badly her nightmares have screwed her over since they first surfaced years ago.

“Yeah, okay. Unless…” Lovelace hesitates for only the briefest moment, and then her words tumble out of her mouth before she loses the nerve to say them. “Unless you want to spend the night here with me?”

Minkowski’s lips part slightly in surprise, but her expression soon softens. “Of course I will,” she replies. “But I don’t think we’ll be able to fit both of us into one sleeping bag. I’ll have to bring mine from my quarters and find a place to tether it.”

“Go ahead,” says Lovelace. Even if the limitations of zero gravity do not allow her to fall asleep with the comforting form of Minkowski’s body pressed up against her, her mere presence is enough to set her more at ease. “We’ll make it work.”

Minkowski returns a couple of minutes later with her sleeping bag from her quarters. Lovelace helps her tether it to the wall close enough to her own so that they can maintain the illusion of sleeping next to each other. Before settling into her sleeping bag for the night, Lovelace dims the lights and pulls the shade down over the window to block out the constant light of the star.

“Do you mind if I don’t have the lights all the way off?” she asks. “I have an easier time sleeping that way.” It’s not that she’s afraid of the dark, because she’d feel silly being a grown-ass woman who can’t handle a little darkness, but having that little bit of light in the room is always a small comfort to her whenever she inevitably wakes from a nightmare.

“No, that’s fine,” Minkowski replies. “I don’t mind.”

After they have both made themselves comfortable in their sleeping bags, Lovelace reaches across the scant amount of distance between them as if to reassure herself that Minkowski is truly there beside her. Minkowski takes hold of her hand and holds it tightly, leaning in to kiss her briefly before letting go.

“Goodnight,” Minkowski says. “Sleep well.”

“You too,” Lovelace replies.

She closes her eyes, and eventually the lull of sleep overtakes her.

 

* * *

 

Lovelace cannot remember the last time she had a dream that didn’t wake her up with her heart pounding and her body sheathed in cold sweat. In slumber she has no way to defend herself against the nightmarish thoughts that she can mostly push to the back of her mind during her waking hours. They have always been the same dreams of watching her old crew die one by one, but ever since her return to the Hephaestus, a new nightmare has joined her repertoire of dreams. Her old fear of dying alone in space kicks into high gear as she dreams of being alone on her shuttle as it falls helplessly into the star no matter how many times she tries to course-correct it. Not even Minkowski’s sleeping presence next to her can help ward off this particular nightmare, and so like clockwork, she wakes after only a couple hours of sleep with the panicked adrenaline of her fight-or-flight instinct coursing through her.

 _Relax. Breathe_ , she tells herself, forcing herself to take deep inhales and exhales to slow her heart rate. Her hand shakes as she rubs it across her face to wipe away the beads of sweat that form at her temples and the damp prick of teardrops that stick to her eyelids. She digs up one of the many terrible, long-winded jokes that she has stored away in her memory to calm her down during moments like these. _So one day a leading expert on wasps walks into a record shop--_

The sound of movement beside her stops her mid-thought. Minkowski shifts in her sleep, muttering something indistinct that Lovelace is fairly certain is not even English. She faces toward Lovelace now, her eyes closed and a slight frown set upon her lips. Her hair spills loose across the pillow, and a few strands fall in front of her face. Lovelace reaches out to push them back, her hand brushing against Minkowski’s forehead as she does so.

Her heart rate has slowed enough by now that its beat no longer pounds in her chest and echoes in her head, but her mouth remains dry no matter how many times she swallows to try to reintroduce moisture into it. Trying not to disturb Minkowski’s sleep with too much noise, she pulls herself out of her sleeping bag so that she can reach for the bottle of water that she keeps secured nearby. Only half of its contents remain, and so she savors each drop as she drinks. After her thirst has been sated, she sets the empty water bottle aside and scrubs her hands across her face with another deep breath. There’s no going back to sleep for her now, not when she knows that she will fall back into the same nightmares again, and so she has returned to the question of what she is going to do to keep herself occupied until morning. Minkowski’s presence in her quarters adds another complicated layer to that question. She does not want to deprive her of her sleep by doing anything that may wake her up.

That issue turns out to be moot, however, when she hears the rustle of movement from somewhere behind her. A light touch to her shoulder tells her that Minkowski has awoken, followed by the sleep-heavy words of “Hey. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Lovelace lies. “Go back to sleep.”

“Isabel,” Minkowski says, and the use of her first name catches Lovelace off-guard. It has been a long time since she has been “Isabel” to anyone, although she supposes she and Minkowski have earned first-name basis with each other by this point. “You can tell me.”

Lovelace turns to face Minkowski, and in the dim light of the room she sees the concern in her expression. “Just the same old nightmares,” she replies. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Minkowski rubs her shoulder comfortingly. The gesture reminds Lovelace that no matter how many times she must endure this endless cycle of nightmares and old ghosts, she is not alone. Isolating herself to face them alone may have been her primary approach since her return to the Hephaestus, but now for the first time in a long while, she has someone to share her burdens with.

“It’s just…” Her words break off there as she struggles to express the feelings that she has barely been able to organize into coherent thoughts in her own mind, let alone to another person. “For once in my life, I want to be able to sleep without having to relive everything I’ve gone through. Just _once_. Is that too much to ask for?”

At first, Minkowski does not say anything to her, although the gentle motion of her hand continues in silent reassurance. Just when Lovelace fears that Minkowski has nothing to say and that she has made a mistake in trying to express even the smallest portion of the thoughts and fears that have tormented her over the past several months, Minkowski opens her mouth to speak.

“Do you want to know what I think?” she asks, speaking her words carefully as if she is putting an immense amount of thought into each one. “I think that you’ve shown an incredible amount of strength to be able to endure the things that you have. Even before I met you, when you were just a voice on some old audio logs, I listened to you talk about everything that happened with your crew and realized how _strong_ you had to be to face all of that. I could hear you breaking down as time went on, but you never let any of it break you completely. You found the strength to take all of that pain and turn it into resolve so that you could try to find a way home. And that’s--it’s _so_ admirable. It’s more than anything I could ever do.”

“Admirable,” Lovelace repeats with a scoff. “What the hell good does ‘admirable’ do me? It doesn’t bring back everything I’ve lost. It doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I don’t even know who I _am_ anymore. Compared to who I was, at least. And now where am I? Still not home. Still on this fucking space station. Still afraid.” The last word breaks apart as it leaves her mouth.

Minkowski tightens her grip on her shoulder in encouragement. “You’re not alone in this,” she says. “I mean, God knows there hasn’t been a moment since everything started going wrong that I haven’t been terrified out of my mind. And I can’t _imagine_ how much worse it must be for you. But you’re not alone anymore. You have people who care about you. You have me.”

Minkowski’s words are nothing that Lovelace has not tried to tell herself, but hearing them from another person makes her believe them more. No matter how cheap words may seem in the face of terrible memories and long-standing fears, hearing Minkowski’s support for her eases a little bit of the weight that has she has always carried deep within her heart.

“I don’t know what else I can say,” Minkowski continues. “But you’re braver and stronger than you know. And I can’t promise that we’ll find a way to get out of this, but until the end, I’m here for you.”

“Yeah,” Lovelace manages to say in response. She takes another calming breath. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“No problem.”

Minkowski lets go of her shoulder and leans against her, careful not to send her drifting too far away with the force of the movement. Lovelace wraps an arm around her to pull her closer, and Minkowski’s head rests at the perfect height for her to press a kiss to the top of her head. Minkowski gives a murmur of contentment at the motion.

“Are you going to try to go back to sleep?” she asks Lovelace.

“I probably should,” Lovelace replies, ignoring the voice in her head that whispers to her that the nightmares will inevitably continue as soon as she drifts off to sleep. “There’s still a few more hours until reveille. And you should try to get some more sleep too. You don’t have to stay up for my sake.”

“Okay.” Minkowski lifts her head so that she can meet Lovelace’s lips in a kiss. “Sleep well. I’ll be right here with you.”

“Yeah,” says Lovelace. “Same.”

She unwraps her arm from around Minkowski so that they can return to their sleeping bags, warm and secured against the slight chill of the room’s air circulation. She focuses on Minkowski’s presence beside her, listening to to the quiet sound of her breaths to anchor her to the present moment. Lovelace closes her eyes and tries to let her mind be at peace, but even after Minkowski’s breathing fades to the soft, steady sound of sleeping breaths, she lies awake until the new day arrives.


	7. Chapter 7

As the days and weeks pass by, the station’s state of disrepair begins its descent into the question of “Can we survive without this system?” rather than “What can we do to fix this system?” Even after two months of knowing that the Hephaestus’s problems are ultimately unfixable, Lovelace has not been able to do much to mentally prepare herself for this inevitable outcome. It doesn’t help that the deaths of each system sneak up on them slowly--the temperature controls in the observation deck one day, the pressure exchange system in all but one of the airlocks another day, the electrical grid in the tech wing on yet another day. If everything happened all at once, at least their suffering would be quick. Instead, the crew is left with the agonizing issue of having to constantly ask themselves whether today will be the day they have to give up on yet another system.

“Okay. Today’s spacewalk detail,” Minkowski says to the crew one morning when they have gathered to receive their instructions for the first major task of the day. “Lovelace, you’ll be taking care of the manual adjustment of the satellite receiver to see if that’ll help with our distress signals. I’ll be checking out the exterior integrity of the section of the starboard side of the station that we had to seal off after the fire last night. Hera, you’ll be on tech duty as usual, and Hilbert, you’ll be running support from the comms room for Lovelace’s work on the receiver. Everyone got it?”

“Got it,” replies Lovelace, and Hera and Hilbert’s responses of “Yes, sir” and “Understood, Commander” soon follow. It’s always a risk leaving Hera and Hilbert unattended as the only crew members inside the station, but Hera has been very good thus far at making Minkowski believe that she will obey her orders not to bring any harm to Hilbert, intentionally or otherwise. Lovelace is just glad that she has gained the medical clearance from Hilbert to do spacewalks again after the agonizing months of her recovery. Not that spacewalks are particularly _fun_ when a vital system could go offline at any given moment, but anything is better than sitting around on support duty while everyone else does the brunt of the work.

“Hera, you still haven’t had any luck with the pressure systems at the other airlocks?” Minkowski asks.

“No, Commander, I’m sorry,” replies Hera. “You’ll both have to use the main airlock today.”

Minkowski gives a frustrated sigh. “All right. It’s not ideal, but we’ll make it work. Everyone to your stations. I want to get this done as soon as possible.”

Lovelace accompanies Minkowski to the airlock, where they begin the process of suiting up. Spacesuits are not exactly the sexiest attire in the universe, but that does not stop Lovelace from getting caught up in a moment of distraction as she watches Minkowski pull her spacesuit on over her uniform. Her mind lingers upon a memory from the previous night: her fingers curled inside Minkowski, followed by Minkowski’s face between her legs and her tongue teasing against her clit. She refuses to let any of that distract her once they are outside the station. This is the first time that they have done a spacewalk together since Lovelace has been permitted to wear a spacesuit again, and she will not let recent developments in their relationship get in the way of the important work that they need to do.

“Are you sure we can’t hold this off until Hera can get the pressure systems working for at least one of the other airlocks?” she asks Minkowski. “Having to use three lengths of tether to get around to the opposite side of the station isn’t exactly efficient.”

“No, I want to get this checked out sooner rather than later,” Minkowski says as she connects the lengths of tether that she needs. “And considering the way things have been going lately, those pressure systems may not even work at _all_ anymore. If we hadn’t lost my propulsion maneuvering unit when Eiffel used it to get to the shuttle, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue to have such a long trip to the other side of the station, but…” She sighs. “It’s fine. I could use a nice long walk right now, anyway.”

They check their gear one last time--tethers, mag boots, oxygen reserves--before putting on their helmets and giving Hera the all-clear to begin the pressure equalization process. Once they have finally passed through the airlock, Lovelace floats freely in the vacuum of space with only her tether to hold her before her mag boots engage, cementing her to the hull of the station.

“Tech? Support? Do you read me?” Minkowski asks over her suit’s comms system.

“Loud and clear, Commander,” Hera confirms, followed by Hilbert’s affirmation of “Yes, Commander.”

“How about me?” says Lovelace. Upon hearing the same confirmations, she turns her attention toward Minkowski. “Okay. It shouldn’t take me much longer than ten or so minutes to take care of the satellite receiver. Do you want me to wait for you once I’m done?”

“No,” replies Minkowski. “I don’t want to risk anything with you being out here longer than you have to. I’ll meet you back inside.”

“Roger that.” Lovelace reaches out to brush her hand against Minkowski’s. The thick gloves of their spacesuits hinder the true comfort of physical contact between them, but the faint squeeze that Lovelace feels against her hand in response to her touch gives her all of the reassurance that she needs. “Good luck. Let me know how things are looking when you get there.”

“I will. Good luck to you too,” Minkowski says before turning away from her to begin the trek across the hull of the station.

Lovelace makes her way toward the satellite receiver. The process of its manual readjustment is a simple task that she has had to do multiple times over the almost one thousand cumulative days that she has spent on the Hephaestus, but that does not stop her from having to take a breath to steady herself before she gets to work. With occasional assistance from Hera and Hilbert to ensure that her adjustments do not cause the station to lose its reception completely, she gets the task done quickly with plenty of oxygen remaining in her suit’s reserves. At least that is one job that has gone smoothly in the face of so many things going wrong lately.

“Okay, I’m just about finished up,” Lovelace says over her comms link to both Minkowski and the station. “Hera, be ready to let me in when I get back to the airlock. How are things going with you, Minkowski?”

“I’m almost there,” Minkowski replies. “This is one hell of a walk. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.”

“Commander, I’m reading a loss of magnetism in the area of the hull that you’re approaching,” Hera reports. “You might want to be careful where you step.”

“Roger that, Hera.” Over the comms, Lovelace hears the slow breaths of Minkowski’s exertion. “It’s probably just part of the exterior damage that I’m checking out. Hopefully it’s not a sign of a bigger problem.”

Lovelace makes her own way across the hull to the short distance she needs to cross to get to the airlock. The blue light of Wolf 359 shines brightly around her, and even with the eye protection that her helmet’s visor provides she still needs to block the glare from the star with one hand. They are now approaching the six month mark since the star’s surprise change in color, and so despite all of the astrophysical evidence that indicates that this is not a thing that should be happening, Lovelace suspects that Wolf 359’s blue phase is here to stay.

She is about to tell Hera to prepare the airlock for her reentry when Minkowski’s voice comes over the comms system again. “Oh,” she says in a tone that carries the unmistakable sentiment of “Well, that’s not good” in the single syllable. “That would explain why there’s a loss of magnetism in this section of the hull. Hera, how have you not told us about this by now? Are your sensors not picking it up?”

“I’m sorry, Commander, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hera replies. “I have a lot to keep track of around here, so if I’ve missed anything lately, I’m really--”

“This part of the hull has literally rotted through,” says Minkowski, interrupting Hera’s apology. “And it’s not fire damage from last night. I’m not even sure this is something that the stress fractures could have caused.”

“What?” Lovelace demands in disbelief. “That’s not something you _miss_ , Hera. When there’s a big goddamn rotting _hole_ in the hull of the station, we shouldn’t be finding out about it in the middle of a spacewalk.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Captain,” Hera retorts, her apology laced with sarcasm this time. “Maybe if I didn’t have a million other things to take care of when it comes to keeping us in orbit with at least a few vital systems not in the red, I’d be able to keep track of everything a little better. And okay, _maybe_ I’ve overlooked this one thing, but--”

“Settle down, you two,” says Minkowski. “This isn’t the time.”

Lovelace gives a weary sigh, but she heeds Minkowski’s words regardless. “So why haven’t we had alarms telling us that we’re losing oxygen and pressure in whatever rooms are under the rotting part of the hull? Is it the section of the station we had to seal off and shut off life support for?”

“It must be. Otherwise we’d be having a huge problem in whatever room is below this.” There is a brief pause on the other end of the comms connection before Minkowski continues on. “From what I can tell, the power’s off in this wing of the station, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I’m not sure I can get closer to investigate without--”

Her words break off into a sharp intake of breath followed by a mutter of “Oh, damn it all.” Lovelace’s heartbeat quickens at the continued tone in her voice that indicates nothing good.

“Minkowski? Are you okay?”

“Uh… Maybe? I’m--” A brief sound of pain echoes through Lovelace’s comm. “I got too close to the rotted part of the hull and my mag boots weren’t able to engage. My foot went through one of the weakened sections and--ow, oh _God_ \--I’m not sure I can get it out.”

The state of the hull must be truly dilapidated if it has weakened enough to give way under Minkowski’s footsteps. “Hera, is she still attached to the station?” Lovelace asks, delving straight into the important issue rather than dwelling on how bad this could be for Minkowski.

“My sensors indicate that her tether is holding and her suit’s systems are all still nominal. No breaches in the exterior of her suit,” Hera confirms. “Commander, can you move at all?”

“Not well,” says Minkowski. “Maybe if I had something for leverage, but…” There’s another sound of exertion that Lovelace assumes is another attempt to pull out her trapped foot. “Nope. I don’t think it’s coming out. It’s stuck. It’s--oh, God. I’m stuck.”

The distinct note of panic that enters Minkowski’s voice does not do much to calm the pounding of Lovelace’s heart, nor does the faint sound of her anxious breaths. She cannot allow either of them lose their composure in the face of a potentially dangerous situation. They have both already dealt with enough crap to have this be the one thing that pushes them over the edge into utter panic.

“Renée, listen to me. Everything’s going to be fine.” Minkowski’s first name slips out from between Lovelace’s lips before she realizes what she is saying. Usually they are only “Renée” and “Isabel” to each other within the relative privacy of their own quarters, but with Hilbert disconnected from the comms after having finished his job acting as Lovelace’s support, she does not run the risk of him questioning the increased level of familiarity between them. “I still have plenty of O2 left in my suit. I’ll come to your position and help pull your foot out from the--”

“That’s not going to work, Captain,” Hera interrupts her. “Your tether isn’t long enough to reach her.”

“Then I’ll go inside and hook up a longer tether. I’m right near the airlock anyway, it shouldn’t take me long to--”

“No, that won’t work either,” says Minkowski. “I had to use three lengths of tether to get over here. There’s only one extra length left, and that won’t be enough for you to reach me. Having to walk this far across the hull because only one airlock is working isn’t exactly within normal spacewalk parameters.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do? Unless…” The flicker of a dangerous yet perfectly tenable solution enters Lovelace’s mind. It’s a solution that comes with an enormous amount of risks, but when they are already limited in the amount of options and resources at their disposal, sometimes a risky endeavor is the only choice left. “I _could_ untether myself from the station,” she ventures. “That way I could still make it over to you as long as my mag boots hold. I know it’s a lot longer of a walk than what’s normally done untethered, but--”

“No,” Minkowski replies in flat refusal. “Absolutely not. If your mag boots malfunction, you’ll be freely floating in space, and without a tether or a propulsion unit you’ll have no way to get back if that happens. And we wouldn’t be able to send Hilbert out here to save your ass because we need to have one non-Hera person inside the station at all times to avoid all three of us getting locked out if something goes wrong with the airlock.”

“I agree,” says Hera. “Sorry, Captain, but I think untethering yourself would be a really, _really_ bad idea. Especially because the loss of magnetism in portions of the hull is what got Commander Minkowski into this situation in the first place. Things might be a lot worse for you if your mag boots disengage while you’re trying to rescue her.”

“Look, unless the two of you can come up with a better idea, it’s our only option.” Lovelace reaches around to where the tether that anchors her to the station is hooked to her spacesuit. “But we don’t have a lot of time to figure things out, and I’m not interested in sitting around while you guys worry about how dangerous things are.”

Minkowski’s noise of frustration echoes through the comms system. “Damn it, Isabel, if you untether yourself from this station, I swear to God--”

“I’ll be _fine_ ,” Lovelace assures her. She unhooks her tether and takes a cautious step forward. “I’ll follow along with your tether and grab onto it if things get rough. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

This time, the sound that she hears from Minkowski over the comms is a resigned sigh, one that acknowledges that she cannot argue the matter further. “Okay,” she relents. “Just… please be careful. _Promise_ me you’ll be careful.”

“I promise,” says Lovelace. She takes a deep breath to steady herself as she steps forward again. “But just warning you right now, you might have to listen to a bad joke or two by the time I make it over to you.”

“For my benefit or yours?”

“Oh, definitely mine.” Lovelace takes another step. “But I know how much you love them. Have I told you the one about the man who drives trains yet?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Minkowski replies. “I guess that’s one thing I have to look forward to.”

Lovelace gives a brief chuckle. “Happy to be of assistance.”

She continues to move across the hull at a slow and steady pace. Her heart pounds furiously in her chest with each step that she takes. The dark void of space closes in on her, reminding her that the magnetic connection between her boots and the hull is the only thing that keeps her from floating freely into its depths and eventually falling into the star. But no, she refuses to let herself think about that. She is going to keep on walking until she gets to Minkowski, pull off a heroic rescue, and allow them both to survive another day. Dying is not an option, _especially_ not after she has already endured so much.

When Lovelace has traveled just over half of the distance to Minkowski’s position, Hera’s voice breaks through the comms. “Commander, Captain, not to be the bearer of bad news,” she says, “but I’m sensing some meteorological activity coming from the star. We’re going to have a minute or two of minor turbulence soon. I strongly suggest you brace yourselves.”

“Great,” Lovelace mutters. “Just what we need.”

She braces herself against the station’s hull to prepare for the metaphorical rough seas. Sure enough, the station rocks slightly with the force of the solar wind that Hera senses. Lovelace has been outside the station during stellar activity before--how can she forget her futile attempt to save Officer Fisher’s life when meteors began pounding the Hephaestus earlier than anticipated--but her lack of tether leaves her in an even more vulnerable position than usual. The thought of how only one strong gust or change in magnetism can spell out her death haunts the back of her mind, growing louder and more pronounced with each bump of turbulence.

“Okay,” she says, breathing through the sense of dread that builds within her and focusing herself upon less panic-inducing thoughts. “Okay. So there was once this man who drove trains for a living. He loved his job, but he also had a reputation for being a bit of a reckless driver. One day, he ended up causing a crash that killed one person. He went to court over the incident and was found guilty, and he was sentenced to death by electrocution. When the day of the execution came, he requested a single banana as his last meal. After eating the banana, he was strapped into the electric chair. The switch was pulled, sparks flew, and smoke filled the room, but nothing happened. The man was perfectly fine.”

She hears the sound of Minkowski’s groan through the comms. “This is going to be a bad one, I just know it.”

“Oh, it’s got a great payoff, trust me,” Lovelace assures her. Focusing on the words of the joke have already helped to slow her heart rate, no matter how much the station continues to rock and sway in its orbit. “So anyway, the failed execution was seen as a sign of divine intervention, and the man was allowed to go free. Somehow he ended up getting his old job back, and he obviously hadn’t learned his lesson because he kept driving just as recklessly as before. Once again, he caused the train to crash, this time killing two people. The trial went the same as it did before, and he was sentenced to death again. This time, the man requested two bananas as his last meal. After eating the bananas, he was strapped into the electric chair. The switch was pulled, sparks flew, and smoke filled the room, but the man was once again unharmed.”

“Sorry to interrupt, Captain, but the worst of the turbulence is over,” Hera says. True to her word, the surface of the station now feels much more stable beneath Lovelace’s feet in the absence of any further abnormal activity from the star. “It’s now safe for you to move again as long as you proceed cautiously.”

“Thanks, Hera.” She straightens up and continues on her path toward Minkowski’s position, one step at a time. “Where was I again?”

“The man survived the electric chair for a second time,” Minkowski supplies.

“Right. So of course the man’s survival was seen as another sign of divine intervention, and he was free to go. And once again, he somehow managed to get his old job back, and he ended up crashing yet another train, killing three people this time. Just like before, he was sentenced to death, and on the day of his execution he requested three bananas as his last meal. And so the executioner said, ‘You know what? No. I’ve had it with you and your stupid bananas and walking out of here unharmed. I’m not giving you anything to eat. We’re strapping you into the chair and doing this now.’ So the man was strapped into the electric chair without a last meal. The switch was pulled, sparks flew, and smoke filled the room, but the man was still unharmed. The executioner was speechless. And so the man looked at him and said, ‘Oh, the bananas had nothing to do with it. I’m just a really bad conductor.’”

At first, there is only silence on the other end of her comms, but then she hears the sound of Minkowski’s laughter. “Oh my God. That was--that was _so_ bad.”

“I warned you,” says Lovelace. “Come on, at least it got you to laugh. And to forget about any potential danger for a little while.”

“Yeah, I guess I can’t fault you for that.” The exasperated amusement in Minkowski’s voice soon gives way to concern. “You doing okay now?” she asks.

“Yeah. I’m okay. I’m close enough to see you now.” Lovelace keeps her focus upon the stationary form of Minkowski in the distance, letting the sight of her goal be the final push she needs to reach her destination. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Minkowski assures her, although Lovelace can hear the gritted teeth in her response. “Be careful as you come closer to me. Make sure your mag boots are still holding on to the hull.”

Lovelace grabs onto the length of Minkowski’s tether that she has been following, making sure not to pull on it too hard as she uses it as another point of contact between her and the station. As she approaches Minkowski’s position, she takes each one of her steps with caution to ensure that she maintains her footing. There’s a lurch of terror in her stomach every time her mag boots do not quite engage, but she does not let herself descend too far into panic. Instead, she grips Minkowski’s tether tighter and maneuvers around the spots of weakened magnetism as best as she can.

Her relief of finally getting a few yards’ distance away from Minkowski quickly gives way to a sinking feeling of doom when she sees the rotting part of the hull that Minkowski had been investigating before getting her foot trapped. The best comparison Lovelace can think of is an old, decrepit house where the wooden exterior has rotted away to reveal the skeleton of the structure within. The sight unsettles her almost as much as the initial news that the station’s structural damage is unfixable, and it throws the rapidly approaching end of the Hephaestus’s life into even starker light.

“Damn,” she says. “You weren’t kidding about how bad this is. And if Hera’s sensors weren’t even picking it up until you told her about it…” She breaks off there, unsure if she wants to give voice to the possibility that this is not the only patch of rot that has broken through the station’s exterior.

“How about you help me get unstuck first, and then we can discuss the terrifying implications of unnoticed hull breaches once we’re back inside,” Minkowski suggests.

“Okay. One heroic rescue, coming right up.”

Lovelace approaches her cautiously, testing the integrity of the hull below her before she presses her full weight into her steps. When she has established herself on a solid portion of the damaged hull, she lets go of Minkowski’s tether and extends a hand out to her.

“All right, grab my arm,” she says. “If you use me for leverage, I think it’ll be enough to get your foot out.” She centers her weight across both of her feet to brace herself into a strong stance. Minkowski grasps her forearm in a firm grip. “On three. One, two… _three_!”

Minkowski gives a brief cry of pain, followed by a breath of relief when her foot finally comes free. She continues to hold onto Lovelace tightly as she tests taking a step with her previously trapped foot. Her boot has barely connected to the hull before she pulls it up again with a hiss of breath between her teeth.

“You okay?” Lovelace asks.

“Yeah. I just don’t think I should risk putting weight on it until I get back inside and have Hilbert take a look at it. Do you mind carrying me? It’ll be a lot quicker than having to hobble my way back.”

“Sure. What’s a heroic rescue without me sweeping the damsel up in my arms and carrying her to safety?” Lovelace laughs, imagining the scowl of irritation that is surely crossing Minkowski’s expression at being called a damsel in distress. “We’ll attach your tether to my suit. You’ll just have to hold onto me really tight until we get back to the airlock.”

“Right. Hold onto you. That shouldn’t be a problem.” Minkowski carefully unhooks her tether and fastens it to Lovelace’s spacesuit before allowing her to scoop her up into her arms. “How’s your O2 supply? I gave myself ninety minutes just in case, so I should be fine, but...”

“I’ve still got a little over twenty minutes left. It’ll be enough,” Lovelace assures her. “Okay, hold on tight. Time to get back inside this death trap before anything else goes wrong.”

They complete the trek back to the airlock with few words exchanged between them. Once they have finally passed through the airlock to re-enter the station, Lovelace’s sigh of relief lets out all of the tension that she’d never even realized she was holding in her body. The removal of her helmet, spacesuit, and mag boots feels like an enormous weight has been lifted from her in more ways than one. She can talk all she wants about how glad she is to be able to do spacewalks again, but after the harrowing experience of traversing half the hull with no tether, she is content to stay inside for a long, _long_ time.

She has barely finished removing her heavy gear when she finds Minkowski’s arms around her once again, pulling her into a bone-crushing hug. “I know I should probably lecture you about how stupid you were to risk your life like that,” Minkowski says. “But… thank you. As reckless as it was, you still saved me, and I can’t fault you for that.”

“You’d better not,” replies Lovelace. She remains in the tight embrace of Minkowski’s arms for one more moment before pulling away and pressing a tender kiss to her forehead. “So what now?”

“I have to have Hilbert take a look at my foot. I know it’s not broken, and I’m pretty sure nothing’s twisted or sprained, but better safe than sorry. And after that…” Minkowski trails off with a sigh. “Then it’s time to figure out what to do next.”

Lovelace does not have to ask for clarification to know that “what to do next” refers to the even deeper state of disrepair that the Hephaestus has fallen into. Ever since the crew learned of the stress fractures slowly killing the station, the course of action has always been to keep hanging on for as long as possible. With the newest discovery of the rotting portion of the hull, however, the limited time that they have left stares them directly in the face with the possibility that the end is coming sooner than they think.

“Right,” says Lovelace. “I’ll let you get to it, then. Let me know if you need me for anything.”

“Will do.” Minkowski takes hold of her hand and squeezes it gently in reassurance before gathering her gear to return it to its storage locker. “See you later.”

After Minkowski has departed, Lovelace takes care of putting her own gear away before retreating to the mess hall to drink the cup of coffee that she hadn’t had time for earlier in the morning. There are probably a million other tasks that she should be attending to right now, but after the events of the past hour Lovelace figures that she deserves a couple hours of rest. She will certainly need to make the most of her downtime before Minkowski reports back with the plan for what to do next, because who knows what will be in store for her once the crew decides how to proceed with the limited future that the station has left.

Half an hour later, after Lovelace has finished her coffee and started entertaining the question of what to do next, Minkowski enters the room. She moves with purpose, as if she has expected to find Lovelace here instead of having stumbled upon her by chance, and settles herself down at the table across from her with little more than a brief greeting.

“Hey,” Lovelace greets her. “How’s your foot?”

“A little sore. There’s some minor swelling and bruising, but Hilbert says that as long as I take it easy for the rest of the day there shouldn’t be any problems. And after that spacewalk, I’m happy to have an excuse to take a breather for a little while.”

The look on Minkowski’s face, however, paints a picture that is the opposite of relaxation. Deep lines of worry crease her forehead, and her lips press together into a thin line of both grimness and determination. It’s a look that Lovelace has seen from her far too often, and it’s usually a sign that something is wrong. At least this time Lovelace does not need to guess at the cause of her consternation.

“But that’s not all,” she says.

“No, it’s not. I... “ Minkowski hesitates there before continuing on. “I talked with Hera and we’ve… We’ve made a decision. About what to do about the station now that things are definitely worse than we thought.”

“Oh,” is all Lovelace can say in response. The word “decision” sound inescapably final, as if it is not a matter up for discussion or debate. “Let’s hear it, then. Hit me with the bad news.”

“Not yet. I need Hilbert to hear it too, and I’d rather not have to go through this twice. He should be on his way here right now.”

“He’ll be here in less than a minute, Commander,” Hera informs her.

“Thank you, Hera,” Minkowski replies.

Lovelace reaches across the table to touch Minkowski’s hand. She is ready to withdraw the contact the moment that she hears Hilbert enters the room, but for now she wants to give Minkowski all of the comfort and support she needs in the wake of another discovery regarding the station’s condition that has shaken all of them to the core. Minkowski shifts her hand under her touch so that their fingers can entwine together. She brings their interlocked fingers to her lips to give Lovelace her own share of reassurance before she shares the decision that she and Hera have made about the Hephaestus’s future.

When the door to the mess swings open, Lovelace moves her hand away and turns her attention to Hilbert. He looks remarkably unruffled for someone who has surely been filled in on what happened during the spacewalk after he had disconnected from the the comms, but honestly Lovelace expects nothing less from him. He joins them at the table with no further words beyond an inquiry of “What is so important?”, as if Minkowski has pulled him away from important business.

“I’m ready whenever you are, Commander,” Hera says.

“Right. So.” Minkowski takes a breath to prepare herself. “As all of you are aware, we’ve encountered some unexpected major damage to the exterior of the station. We don’t know where exactly it came from, but with the stress fractures taking more and more systems permanently offline, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve passed the point where we can keep patching things up and hope that it’ll be enough to hold us until someone picks up our distress calls. And so Hera and I have talked things over, and we’ve made the decision to pull the plug on the Hephaestus. So to speak.”

Lovelace has expected the news to be something like this, but that does not stop Minkowski’s words from piercing straight through her skin, punching her in the gut just as hard as the news of the stress fractures had done. She has known since then that the crew would have to go down with the ship at one point or another if they could not find a way to leave the Hephaestus, but facing that day head-on is another matter entirely. Nothing spells “finality” more clearly than the words “pulling the plug on the Hephaestus,” as if the station is a terminally ill patient whose body has resisted all methods of treatment to the point that nothing more can be done. Now all that is left is to wait for the inevitable sound of the flatline.

“Starting today, I’m going to shut down everything except for the most essential systems,” says Hera. “And every room on the station that doesn’t get significant daily use will get sealed off if it hasn’t been already. That will keep us going for a little while longer, but…”

“How much longer?” Lovelace asks, not liking the way that Hera’s voice trails off after the word “but.”

“I’m--I’m afraid I can’t say, Captain,” replies Hera. “But my best guess would be a few weeks at the very most, if nothing else major goes wrong. Which is a pretty big ‘if.’”

“We’ll do what we can to keep the essential systems running,” Minkowski adds. “But other than that, we’re going to stop the current repair schedule. I think it’s time for us to accept that we can’t fight this off anymore, no matter how hard we try.”

“So we’re giving up.” The words leave Lovelace’s mouth in a combination of observation and accusation. Giving up has never been something that has agreed with her, but after having seen the extent of the Hephaestus’s decay firsthand, there is not much that she can do to argue against Minkowski and Hera’s decision.

“Yes,” says Minkowski. “We’re still going to try to survive here for as long as we can, because I’m certainly not interested in dying anytime soon. But when it comes to everything else… Yes, we’re giving up.”

Lovelace gives a quiet exhale of breath. “Okay,” is all that she can say in response. “As long as we keep doing everything we can to survive.”

A brief silence falls across the room. “What about you, Hilbert?” Minkowski asks. “You’ve been surprisingly quiet this whole time. Do you have anything to say?”

Lovelace glances in his direction, and much to her surprise, the look on his face is not his usual mask of perpetual inscrutability. Instead, his expression betrays a rare hint of genuine fear, which Lovelace has only seen from him on a handful of occasions: first when he had still been Selberg and she had confronted him about his betrayal, again when she had stormed into the observation deck and shattered his illusion that she’d died trying to get back to Earth, and then a third time when Eiffel had almost died of the Decima virus on his operating table. Lovelace does not want to delve too deeply into the undoubtedly horrifying details of Hilbert’s psyche, but her best guess is that even he is frightened by the looming reminder of his mortality.

“No,” says Hilbert. His voice remains steady in spite of the terror in his eyes. “Nothing to say.”

“Well, I think that’s everything that needs to be said.” Minkowski maintains a tone of all business despite the grim prospects of the crew’s future. “We’ll reconvene in a couple of hours to start work on sealing off rooms so Hera can safely turn off the life support for them. Until then, you’re all free to go.”

Hilbert is the first to depart, making a path straight for the door without looking back. A fleeting thought of what has him in such a hurry to leave passes through Lovelace’s mind, but she has bigger things to worry about with all of the revelations that have come to light today that prey directly upon some of her worst fears. At least the fear of dying alone is no longer as prevalent in her mind, because she _isn’t_ alone, not anymore. She just wishes that she and Minkowski could have had a little more time.

“So,” she says when the two of them linger in front of the door before taking their leave. “I guess this is the end, huh?”

“Yeah.” Minkowski lets out the deep breath of a sigh. “I didn’t want things to come to this, but… Well, we don’t have much of a choice now, do we?”

Lovelace lays a hand on her shoulder. “There’s always a choice,” she replies. “And no matter what we have to do to get there, we’re going to choose to survive. Together.”

Minkowski moves closer to her, resting one of her hands against the small of Lovelace’s back. She tilts her face up toward Lovelace, and Lovelace meets her lips in a kiss. With the simple touch of their lips, she knows that both of them will find the strength to hold on for just a little longer.

“I love you,” she says after she has pulled away from Minkowski. “I wanted to make sure I said that. Before it’s too late.”

“I love you too,” Minkowski echoes her. “There’s no person I’d rather have with me to see all of this to the end.”

Lovelace holds her close, and when she sees the determination in Minkowski’s eyes that breaks through the desperation, she believes her.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue from the middle part of this chapter is directly adapted from "Sécurité."

One hundred and ninety-eight days after the star has turned blue, eighty-two days after Minkowski and Hera have revealed the existence of the stress fractures that are slowly killing the Hephaestus, and twenty-two days after most of the station has been shut down and sealed away, the crew has managed to survive against all odds. There have been some close calls with hiccups in the marginally-functioning major systems that make Lovelace wonder in those moments if the end has finally come, but for the most part she has come to believe that the Hephaestus is as stubborn as its occupants are in its refusal to die. The only question left is how many days are left before that stubbornness fades away, leaving the station as nothing more than a ghost town.

“Check it again,” Lovelace says to Minkowski as they do their routine checks on each of the station’s surviving systems that afternoon. The current candidate is the engines, which have been plodding along well enough over the past few weeks despite their functionality percentage dipping deeper and deeper into the red. “There’s no way those numbers can be right.”

“I have the readout right here in front of me,” Minkowski replies. “See for yourself. That’s the result that the computer’s giving me.”

Lovelace peers over her shoulder to look at the computer screen. “It still can’t be right. Anything below twenty percent and we’d be falling out of orbit. And judging by the lack of angry alarms right now, our orbit is fine.”

Minkowski sighs. “Hera?” she asks. “Can we get a double-check on your readings for the engine functionality?”

Her inquiry is met with nothing but silence. Only the faint hum of machinery echoes through the room.

“Hera,” she says again. “Did you hear me? Can you double-check the--”

“Yes, sorry, Commander. I heard you,” Hera responds. “It’s just that we, uh, might have a bit of a situation on our hands. You need to get to the comms room right away.”

Minkowski exchanges a worried look with Lovelace. “What’s going on?” she asks. “What level of emergency is it?”

“It’s--” Hera hesitates before continuing on. “It’s actually _not_ an emergency this time. Not a bad one, at least. But I’m picking up an approaching vessel on my scans, and it’s sending a hail our way. I’m not sure who they are or what they want, but I think now might be a good time to tell them that we’re home.”

“A _vessel_?” Lovelace repeats in disbelief. Almost two hundred days of no responses to the station’s distress calls, and _now_ , when the Hephaestus is on its last dying breaths, is when a miracle decides to show up? It almost sounds too good to be true, and Lovelace’s immediate instinct is to doubt Hera’s words. “Are you serious?”

“No, Captain, I’m making a really bad joke about the first outside contact we’ve had in months,” says Hera with exasperated sarcasm. “Of _course_ I’m serious. I didn’t want to say anything until I had a better idea of what was happening, but my scans are all checking out. And if they want to talk to us, I suggest that we answer them before they move on.”

“Come on.” Minkowski grabs hold of Lovelace’s arm. “No matter who or what is on board that ship, I’m not passing up a chance to talk to someone who might be able to get us out of here. We’ve been waiting long enough.”

“I’m right behind you,” Lovelace assures her.

They rush to the comms room with no further words spoken between them, as if they think they will jinx whatever good luck may have finally come their way if they speculate about what has brought a spacecraft to their doorstep. Minkowski throws the door open, and Lovelace is right on her heels as she approaches the communications console.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Minkowski mutters to herself as she flips the switches to engage the comms system and tunes the radio to find the correct frequency. A burst of static echoes through the room before the radio picks up the sound of an unfamiliar male voice.

“--curité, sécurité. U.S.S. Hephaestus, this is the U.S.S. Urania. I say again, we are on an approach vector to your current position.”

“Holy shit,” Lovelace gasps. Minkowski holds up a hand to silence her.

“Authentication code Victor-Uniform-Lima-Charlie-Alpha-November,” the voice on the radio continues. “Please advise your intentions.”

A brief moment of silence follows his words. Minkowski then presses the button on the console that will begin a transmission and speaks into the receiver. “U.S.S. Urania, this is Hephaestus Actual,” she says, keeping her voice steady and confident despite the many questions that Lovelace is sure are rushing through her mind. “Continue on current course, and use vector zero one decimal nine for your final approach.”

“Copy that, Hephaestus Actual,” the voice replies. “It’s been a long trip. Please tuck our bunny slippers next to the fire so they’ll be nice and warm for us.”

Minkowski raises her eyebrows. “What?”

“Never mind. Zero one decimal nine is selected. Over and out.”

A burst of static signifies the end of the call. Minkowski turns off the receiver and lets out the deep breath that she has undoubtedly been holding in ever since Hera first alerted them to an incoming transmission.

“He sounds fun,” says Lovelace.

Minkowski does not respond to her comment. “Hera,” she says instead. “Prep the docking bay for their arrival. I want them to be able to dock with minimal issues, so do whatever you need to do to kick the docking system’s ass into cooperation so that nothing goes wrong. And make sure to fill Hilbert in on what’s happening and tell him to meet us in the docking bay when it’s time to greet our guests.”

“Understood, Commander,” comes the sound of Hera’s response.

“What do you need me to do?” asks Lovelace.

“You,” says Minkowski, turning to face her, “are going to come with me to the armory so we can arm ourselves against whoever’s coming here. I don’t care how friendly they sound, we need to be ready for anything.”

“Got it,” Lovelace replies.

No words pass between them as they make their way to the armory. Lovelace isn’t even sure what she _would_ say. After months of being in full doom-and-gloom mode, forced to accept that maybe she will never find a way to get home, the prospect of finally having a way off the station does not yet seem real to her. She cannot expect that the situation will be as simple as their rescuers welcoming them on board their ship and giving them an express ride back to Earth. _Nothing_ is that easy on the Hephaestus, no matter how much Lovelace wishes that an opportunity to leave the station would actually go as planned for once in her life.

Minkowski unlocks the door to the armory and immediately heads to the gun rack. She selects two handguns and pushes one of them into Lovelace’s hands. Lovelace checks to see if it’s loaded and discovers that the clip is empty.

“So who do you think our friend on the other end of the radio is?” she asks Minkowski as she reaches for a box of ammo. “He had the authentication code from Command, so he’s at least deep enough in their need-to-know circle to know that. That’s one reason right there not to trust anyone who steps off that ship.”

“I don’t think we should make any assumptions,” Minkowski replies. Upon confirming that her gun is loaded, she holsters it to her belt. “Best-case scenario, they understand that we’ve been through hell and know that we’re not going to put up with any more crap that Command throws at us. Worst-case scenario…”

“We let them know that these guns aren’t for show,” Lovelace finishes for her.

“I hope it won’t come to that, but yes.”

Lovelace looks up from loading her gun to see Minkowski’s mouth drawn into a grim line. “You’re worried,” she notes.

“Of _course_ I am,” says Minkowski. “Yes, whoever’s on that ship might be the ones to finally get us off this station. But I’ve spent these last few months making my peace with the fact that I might never make it home, and now that we might have a way to get back to Earth again, I… I don’t know what to think about everything that’s happened. And everything about us.”

She hesitates around that last word, as if she is unsure whether she should open that can of worms right now when they have a limited amount of time before the Urania docks with them. Lovelace knows exactly where this train of thought is going: that perhaps everything that has been built up between them has been born from the prospect of them never again seeing Earth and everything that they have left behind there. Returning to Earth brings the issue of Minkowski’s marriage into sharper focus, and if Lovelace is being honest, she has no idea of what to think about that either.

“So what are you saying?” she asks. “That we’re better off forgetting about what’s happened between us once we get back to Earth?”

“No,” Minkowski replies, and the emphatic tone in her response immediately sets Lovelace more at ease. “Maybe when we first started this I expected it to be more… temporary, I suppose. But now I know it’s not, and if we go back to Earth I know that I’d still want to be with you even though…” She breaks off into a sigh. “I’m sorry. This isn’t the time for this. At least not until we have a better sense of what’s going on.”

“Right. Okay.” Lovelace finishes loading the gun and holsters it. Focus on approaching spacecrafts first, deal with emotional entanglements later. She can do that.

“What are we going to tell them about you, though?” asks Minkowski. “I don’t think anyone that Command has sent here will expect to see you alive. You showing up again hasn’t exactly gone according to anyone’s plan.”

“I don’t know what else there is to say other than the same story I told the rest of you,” Lovelace says. “Besides maybe some gloating about how those bastards at Command were sorely mistaken if they thought they’d seen the last of me. But don’t worry,” she assures Minkowski, reading the brief look of concern that crosses her face at the last part of her statement. “I won’t make it all about revenge. Getting home has always been my first priority. You know that.”

“Good.” Minkowski double-checks her holstered gun and does a final visual sweep of the armory for anything else that they might need. “I think that’s everything. We should head for the docking bay and see what we can do to help Hera.”

“Wait.” Lovelace grabs hold of Minkowski’s hand to stop her before she can leave the armory. She captures her in a kiss that turns Minkowski’s questioning murmur into a sigh of contentment. “For luck,” she says after they have withdrawn from each other. “Something tells me we’re going to need it.”

Minkowski clasps Lovelace’s hand and squeezes it tightly. “Whatever happens next, I know you’ll have my back, right?”

“Definitely,” Lovelace says. She lets her hand linger before withdrawing it from Minkowski’s grip. “Come on. Let’s go.”

They arrive at the docking bay to find Hera muttering command lines to herself as she prepares for the Urania’s arrival. An alarm echoes through the room, which Lovelace hopes is an indicator of the approaching spacecraft and not a bigger problem.

“Can we do anything to help you, Hera?” Minkowski asks her, interrupting the recitation of complex calibrations equations that are far beyond the scope of Lovelace’s understanding.

“Oh--yes, Commander, sorry. Sometimes it’s easier for me to focus on things if I say them out loud, and… Well. Anyway.” Hera’s tone shifts from flustered to all-business with astonishing ease. “If one of you could hop on that computer and give me ongoing progress reports on the Urania’s approach, that will really help free up some of my processing power so I can get everything else done.”

“I’m on it,” says Lovelace. She boots up the monitor of the nearby computer terminal and runs the program that will give her a reading on the proximity of any objects following an approach vector toward the station. “It’s about ten minutes out,” she reports. “And it’s still on vector zero one decimal nine. If we can maintain projected orbital speed, the ship should be able to dock with no problem.”

“Our speed is steady and our orbital position is within the nominal range,” Hera replies. “As long as the pressure exchange system doesn’t act up once they dock, I think everything will turn out okay.”

“You _think_?” Minkowski raises her eyebrows in skepticism. “That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“I mean, yes, there is always the possibility that something will go wrong, considering how low the station’s functionality percentages have dropped. But it’ll be _fine_. I’ll make it work.”

Lovelace cannot deny the determination in Hera’s voice, even though her words do not paint a picture of confidence when it comes to the Urania being able to dock without a hitch. “You’d better,” she says to Hera. “I’m not going to let an opportunity for us to get out of here slip by yet again.”

“What about Hilbert?” Minkowski asks. “Did you let him know what’s happening?”

“He’s on his way,” replies Hera. “He should be arriving right--”

The door to the docking bay opens, interrupting her words. Hilbert enters the room and rushes toward them.

“It’s true?” he inquires. “There is a spacecraft approaching the station?”

“Yes, it’s true,” says Minkowski. “Any light you can shed on why someone who’s close enough to Command to have the station’s authentication code would be coming here after months of us having no contact with anyone?”

“No. No light to shed. Situation is completely unprecedented. Maybe if distress call on pulse-beacon relay reached Earth, but you received no response when you called Command almost one hundred days ago, yes?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Minkowski heaves a sigh, as if she has not forgotten the hopelessness she felt that day on the bridge when Command had abandoned them. “Looks like we’re all going to be in the dark for the next--?” She casts a questioning look at Lovelace and the computer.

“Nine minutes,” Lovelace supplies.

Few words pass between them as they wait for the Urania to dock, with the only sounds being the alarm indicating the approaching spacecraft, the whirs and hisses of Hera preparing the docking mechanism, and Lovelace giving periodic updates on the Urania’s approach. Only after Hera has made the announcement of “Docking procedure initiated. Please stand by for the exchange of pressure once the vessel has been secured” does Minkowski spring into action and issue commands.

“Okay, everyone, this is it,” she says. “Hilbert, you’re unarmed, so I’m going to need you to stay behind Lovelace and me at all times. Lovelace, be sure to follow my lead. Don’t use your gun unless you have to, but keep it drawn until we know for sure that we can trust whoever steps off that ship. And all of you, for the love of God, _please_ let me do the talking.”

“Roger that, Commander,” Lovelace replies. “Let’s do this.”

She leaves her position at the computer and joins Minkowski in front of the airlock. When the airlock opens with a hiss of air and the creak of metal, she raises her gun in a preemptive measure against whomever is about to emerge. From beside her, she hears Minkowski’s quiet exhale of preparation as she draws her gun as well. There’s nothing more romantic than facing down the unknown with the woman whom she loves at her side, and Lovelace wouldn’t have it any other way.

Two men step out of the spacecraft, both of them wearing the uniform of Goddard Futuristics operatives. Neither of them carry any weapons, at least not in any of the most obvious places, but that does not set Lovelace any more at ease. The rank insignia on the uniform of one of the men identifies him as a colonel, and when he opens his mouth to speak the hint of an accent that vaguely resembles a southern drawl indicates that he is not the man who sent the radio transmission to the station.

“You can put down your weapons,” he says, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. “We’re unarmed, and we don’t bite.”

“Sorry, not happening.” Minkowski’s hands clench more tightly around her gun. “It’s been a long two years.”

“Well, suit yourselves.” The man remains remarkably unperturbed at Minkowski’s refusal to lay down her gun, as if he has no reason to suspect that she or Lovelace will have an excuse to use them. “Lieutenant Renée Minkowski, I presume?”

“Who’s asking?” Minkowski replies.

“That’d be a ‘yes,’ then.” The man comes closer to where they stand. “My name is Warren Kepler. I work for Goddard Futuristics, SI-5. Whenever you feel comfortable putting down your firearm, it would be a privilege to shake your hand.”

He extends his hand out to her in an expectant gesture, but Minkowski does not accept the handshake. “Why are you here?” she asks instead.

“Oh, sun tanning opportunities,” comes the sound of a voice from behind Kepler. The man who has accompanied him speaks from where he has been casually leaning against the side of the airlock door. The sardonic inflection of his voice closely resembles that of the man who Minkowski had spoken to on the radio. “We heard that Wolf 359 is _really_ beautiful this time of year, and we just _had_ to check it out.”

Kepler gestures back to the other man with a smirk. “This sarcastic ray of sunshine is Special Operative Daniel Jacobi. He’s my administrative officer and good right hand.”

“You’re too kind, sir,” Jacobi replies.

“We’re here to help, Lieutenant.” Kepler’s smirk transforms into a smile that shows far too many teeth for it to match the reassurance of his words. “Here to help.”

His eyes roam across the trio of people before him, taking in the sights of someone who is not Minkowski for the first time. Lovelace expects him to comment on her first, but instead his gaze falls upon Hilbert. She tightens her hold around her gun just in case, refusing to let her guard down even when she is not yet under direct scrutiny.

“Dr. Hilbert,” says Kepler with an inescapable air of familiarity in his voice. “Good to see you again.”

“Major Kepler,” Hilbert replies curtly.

“Colonel, actually,” Kepler corrects him. “Recent development. How’s the work?”

Hilbert makes a noise of discontent at the inquiry. “Complicated.”

“I’m sure. I look forward to hearing the details.” There’s a note of interest in Kepler’s voice that suggests that he maintains both familiarity and genuine investment in Hilbert’s work, which is a worrying prospect in and of itself. If Lovelace didn’t already distrust him for being in the employ of Goddard Futuristics, that right there would be a top reason for her to be wary of him.

“And what have we here?” Kepler continues on, turning his full attention to Lovelace for the first time since they came face-to-face. Lovelace meets his steely eyes in an unwavering glare, refusing to back down from his scrutiny. “A new recruit?”

“Not exactly,” Minkowski replies, hesitating around her words as if she is unsure of how exactly to explain Lovelace to him. Lovelace is more than willing to speak for herself, however, no matter how much Minkowski insists that she should be the one to do most of the talking.

“ _Captain_ Isabel Lovelace,” she says, placing specific emphasis on her rank. “I was the commander and only survivor of the previous Hephaestus mission.”

She expects Kepler to show at least some degree of surprise to her words, perhaps an inquiry of how that is possible or how she has ended up back on the station three years after Command has declared her dead. Instead, he meets her eyes in an even stare before he opens his mouth to speak.

“Charmed,” he says. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

And then, even more puzzlingly, he _smiles_ , as if he has a reason to rejoice in her continued existence. Minkowski casts an alarmed look in her direction, but if Kepler notices this he does not comment on it. Instead, he gives a brief nod before moving onward.

“Personnel files for this mission say that the automated functions of the station are handled by an MX500 Class Adjutant Program, Sensus series?” he asks, speaking not to anyone in front of him but rather to the general space of the station that Hera occupies.

“She tends to prefer ‘Hera,’” comes the sound of Hera’s reply. “It’s less of a mouthful.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.” He then turns his attention to the group at large that stands in front of him. “Lieutenant, Doctor, Captain, Hera. On behalf of Goddard Futuristics, I want to commend you for all of your hard work. I know that your time here has been challenging, but you’ve done something really formidable with--”

“Spare us,” Lovelace interrupts him. She knows corporate talk when she hears it, and his words of praise are nothing but empty sentiments coming from a man who has not had to endure the absolute hell that is life on the Hephaestus. “The last thing we need is head-patting from Goddard’s PR department.”

For the first time in their encounter, Kepler’s expression shifts to show something other than polite interest or a cryptic smile. The flash of a frown that pulls the corners of his mouth downward and crinkles his forehead vanishes in an instant, however, not revealing his irritation at her words for long.

“Lieutenant, Captain, any chance I could have a word with the two of you?” he asks. “Alone?”

“I don’t think so,” Lovelace says. She still does not lower her gun.

“Anything you want to say to us, you can say in front of our crew, Colonel,” adds Minkowski.

“Commander,” Hera begins. Whether she is warning Minkowski or attempting to get her attention remains unclear, but now is certainly not the time for any interruptions.

“Hang on, Hera.” Minkowski takes one hand of her gun to hold up a silencing finger directed at Hera’s general presence on the ship. She does not take her eyes off Kepler, and her other hand remains in a steady grip around her gun.

Kepler continues onward as if he has received no interruptions or words of refusal. “There’s some sensitive information that might be best discussed behind--”

“What part of ‘no’ did you not understand?” Lovelace retorts. In the few minutes that she has known him, Kepler has already proven himself to be tenaciously relentless, and regardless of what he wants she suspects that he is going to be a problem--as if it isn’t already suspicious enough that Command has sent at least two of their high-ranking operatives to retrieve the crew.

“Commander--” Hera ventures again.

“Not now, Hera,” says Minkowski. She gives a huff of frustration before addressing Kepler. “Colonel, I understand the need for discretion. but after everything we’ve been through--”

“Well, that’s exactly what we need to discuss.” Kepler’s mouth curls upward into another smile, and the expression reassures Lovelace no more than the last time. There’s something almost wolfish about his grin, as if behind his facade of civility he is scheming to lure them into a trap and eat them alive.

“No, really,” Hera insists, her interruptions veering into true impatience. “ _Commander_.”

“What, Hera? _What_?” snaps Minkowski.

“Look.”

Lovelace glances around the docking bay until she sees that a third person has now emerged from the Urania. At first she does not recognize him, but then once she catches a glimpse of his face, her breath hitches into a gasp of surprise.

It’s Eiffel. An Eiffel who looks like he’s gone through hell and back--his body frail, his hair gone, and his face gaunt--but none of that changes how he has somehow beaten all of the odds and found his way back to the Hephaestus. Not unlike Lovelace herself has done, she supposes, although her return trip to the station certainly did not leave her looking so unlike herself.

“Hey, gang,” Eiffel says. A nervous pause follows his greeting “So… yeah. Not dead.” He raises his arms in an unenthusiastic gesture of mock celebration. “Whoo.”

“Officer Eiffel?” Hera hesitates around her words, as if she doubts what she is seeing no matter how advanced her optics systems are. “Is… Is that really…?”

“Yeah, it’s really me.” Eiffel smiles weakly. “I missed you too, Hera.”

“Are… Are you okay?” Lovelace asks. As reassuring as it is to know that Eiffel has survived, she cannot get past how his appearance severely stretches the definition of the word “okay.” “You look--what did they--?”

“It’s cool, Cap’n,” he assures her. “And _they_ didn’t do anything.” He jerks his head toward Kepler and Jacobi. “Trust me, I’d look a lot worse if they hadn’t found me.”

Minkowski, who has remained silently open-mouthed in surprise since Eiffel’s reappearance, turns her attention back to Kepler. “You found him?” she asks.

“The tag on his collar had this address on it,” Jacobi pipes up from where he has been more-or-less silently observing the proceedings. “We thought you might like to have him back.”

“And maybe,” Kepler adds, “the fact that we’ve delivered your missing crew member back home relatively safe and sound could be seen as proof that we don’t mean you any harm?”

Minkowski casts a questioning look in Lovelace’s direction. Lovelace responds with a brief nod of encouragement, and then Minkowski holsters her gun with Lovelace following suit. She still does not trust either man that stands in front of her, but she cannot deny that them bringing Eiffel back to the station alive proves that they do not want to immediately bring harm to the crew. Unless they are keeping Eiffel alive specifically as a bargaining chip or as a way to lure in the rest of the crew into a sense of false security, in which case… Well, Lovelace will consider that possibility if it comes. For now, she cannot make any assumptions either way.

“That’s the spirit,” says Kepler. He offers the group another less-than-reassuring smile. “Now, I’m sure there’s some heartwarming reunions that need to happen, but before I let you get to that, the five of us need to talk.”

“Five?” Lovelace mentally counts the number of people that would be involved in a conversation involving so-called sensitive information. Herself, Minkowski, Kepler, Jacobi--but who is the fifth out of the three people who remain?

“Sure,” Kepler replies. “Officer Eiffel should come along. We’ll need him to fill in some of the dots.”

Minkowski lets out a sigh of acquiescence. “Okay,” she agrees. “Let’s talk.”

“Excellent.” Kepler gestures back toward the Urania. “Please, step into my office.”

 

* * *

 

Lovelace should have expected from the moment that she entered the Urania that the meeting with Kepler would go the opposite of what she’d hoped. Kepler can do all he wants to charm them with glasses of whiskey and the confirmation that he and his team have indeed come as a response to Minkowski’s distress call on the pulse beacon relay, but that does nothing to soften the blow when he utters the words “I can’t say I recall Mr. Cutter saying anything about anyone leaving” and “We’re here to help you with phase two of the Hephaestus mission.” Combine that with several not-so-veiled threats about the crew’s disposability, the news that the third member of the Urania’s crew is an AI specialist who can have Hera do her bidding in the blink of an eye, and Kepler assuming control of the station and stripping Minkowski of her command--and Lovelace is starting to think that maybe they would have been better off never responding to that communications hail.

Kepler is kind enough to give them a couple of hours to prepare themselves before they begin their work on remodeling the Hephaestus and getting its dead systems back online with the help of the Urania’s malleable infrastructure. As reluctant as Lovelace is to accept anything from the storeroom of food and other supplies on board the Urania, the call of real coffee grounds proves to be too much of a temptation for her to resist. She brews herself a cup and heads for her quarters, wanting to have at least one moment to herself to enjoy a real cup of coffee before yet another round of hell on the Hephaestus begins. The moment does not last long, however, before a knock sounds against the door.

“Come in,” Lovelace says.

Minkowski enters her quarters. “I see you wasted no time in finding the coffee,” she notes. She inhales, taking in the scent of the freshly brewed beverage. “I should make myself a cup soon too. Who knows how long it’s going to last, especially now that we have Eiffel back.”

“Whiskey and real coffee both on the same day,” Lovelace replies. “If it weren’t for everything else that’s happened today, I’d say I hit the jackpot.”

Minkowski gives a humorless breath of laughter. She joins Lovelace where she floats near the window, looking out at Wolf 359 and its blue light that has remained unchanging over the past six months. Lovelace wordlessly offers her a sip from her mug of coffee, which she accepts. The sigh of satisfaction that she makes after taking a drink is the kind of sound that Lovelace usually only hears from her when they are in the middle of sex.

“That good, huh?” Lovelace says.

Minkowski makes a murmur of acknowledgement in response. “Would we be horrible people if we hid away some of this coffee for ourselves so that everyone else doesn’t finish it first?”

“If your metric for being a horrible person involves stealing coffee, I think you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The ghost of a smile that crosses Minkowski’s expression fades as quickly as it comes. She leans against Lovelace, and Lovelace shifts position so that she can wrap an arm around her to pull her closer. Minkowski rests her head against Lovelace’s shoulder, taking a bracing inhale of a breath.

“You okay?” Lovelace asks.

“Yeah.” Minkowski’s exhale brushes against her skin. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? I mean, Kepler basically demoted you. That can’t have felt good.”

“I’ll be _fine_ ,” Minkowski insists. Her too-adamant emphasis on the word “fine” does not do much to convince Lovelace. “There’s nothing I could have done about it, anyway, I just…” She trails off there, lifting her head from Lovelace’s shoulder. When she speaks again, the nervous waver in her voice reveals the true extent of her unease about the situation. “I don’t know how we’re going to get ourselves out of this one. If Kepler and his team really are so dangerous that even Hilbert is afraid of them, I’m not sure there’s much we can do.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Lovelace assures her. Her words don’t necessarily come from a place of optimism, but rather from one of determination. As far as she is concerned, hell will freeze over before she lets one of Command’s top goons and his best lackeys succeed in taking over the Hephaestus. “I say for now we go with the plan I brought up earlier. We bide our time, go along with whatever they want, and then once we’ve got their weaknesses figured out, we hit them where it hurts, hijack the Urania, and get the hell out of here. But if it comes to that, I need to know that you’ll have my back.”

“I will,” Minkowski says. “Always.”

She straightens up from where she has been leaning against Lovelace and turns to face her. Their hands find their way to each other’s, and their fingers entwine as Minkowski brings their lips together in a kiss. When they pull away from each other, Lovelace brings one of her hands up to brush against Minkowski’s cheek, following a path downward until she can run her thumb along her lower lip. Minkowski’s lips part with the exhale of her breath that shakes slightly on its way out.

“All I wanted was for us to finally find a way home,” she says once Lovelace has withdrawn her hand. Her voice wavers again, tiny and afraid in the face of a goal that has repeatedly been met with nothing but failure.

“We still will,” Lovelace replies. Maybe these last few months that she has spent with Minkowski have made the Hephaestus feel as close to home to her as it ever could, and maybe returning to Earth presents its own series of complications--about the person Lovelace is now compared to who she used to be, about the life that Minkowski has left behind--but none of that changes the deep-seated desire that she has kept close to her heart for years now.

Minkowski tightens her hold against Lovelace’s hand. “Promise?”

“Yeah,” says Lovelace. “I promise.”

They share one more kiss, and then they turn toward the blue light of the star, resolute in their determination to face whatever uncertain future looms ahead of them.


End file.
